Honestly, yes, I think it's one of the best examples of anarchism in action the world has ever seen. And an especially pertinent example to point out to those who'd say things like, "Why would anyone do work or innovate without a profit motive?" Lots of good and innovative software, made without any profit incentive by a collective of people who are working on it just because they want to and they enjoy it.

Yes, as an anarchist I regularly point to FOSS as a plausible example of it working

Cory Doctorow has a novel "Walkaway" which is basically "what if society but FOSS". It's really good!

To answer your question, while it has a lot in common with anarchism I don't think anyone benefits from trying to fit it into a predefined political box. It's something new.

It can definitely be a form of praxis.

Open source is not literally communism, but I do think it's one of the best examples to demonstrate that anarcho-communism is plausible.

Only if you use GPL, not MIT.

It's an observation of Marx, I think correct, that society organises in a manner aligned around the means of production. Agrarian -> feudal, industrial -> capitalist etc. I think the essential distinguishing feature of software vs capital goods is that software can be copied without the loss of the original. Hence I think the concept of ownership fails and the mode of production becomes anarchist.

While not explicitly so, FOSS as a concept aligns very closely with far left anti-capitalist principles. The existence of corporate and right-winger-owned FOSS projects is a bit of an oxymoron, but doesn't discredit the fact that it's inherently a far left concept.

Anarcho Communism

I think FOSS enable those kind of communities but I don’t think FOSS as a concept is any of those things. those communities could equally work with a non FOSS license (eg one that prevents commercial use or a license that allow usage only by members of a specific community). They uses existing licenses because they go momentum and have legal precedents that allows people to defend their rights.

Most FOSS licenses were specifically designed to allow profiting from the wok of others, even the GPL. Just see how many billion dollar companies (think Azure, AWS, etc) profit from projects without giving anything back.

I consider FOSS a step toward prefiguring an anarchy.

Current source control management systems however perpetuate heirarchies with roles such as maintainer and developer with different permissions. I like to keep the permissions similar for roles. I might take away foot guns like force push from developers.

Another problem limiting anarchy is consensus. Getting agreement from everyone effected is still not quite there in the merge request process.

I was introduced to communism/socialism through Linux.

I often think of community run open source free license software projects as an example of communalism, personally. Maybe when I learn about more forms of anarchism and socialism there will be other ideas that feel more apt to describe it

I'm going with communalism. And its even simpler. A group of like minded people wanting to be creative nd share creativity without monetization. Seems more akin to artist movements to me. And I'm all for it.

Fuck yea! I'm not those dumb tear down the government people, I'm the make it redundant pragmatic people. I will go as close to my ideal state as possible.

It's a non-market way of doing things, so sure it fits the definition, but labels are dumb, and the people who really like labels are worse.

You'll also notice that you still have to pay for whatever device Linux goes on, which is a strong hint about the economics at play.

Not really.

I compare it more to fan fiction and amateur writing. Some is a great read, much better than the garbage you might find on NYT's best seller list. Very talented people doing what they love and trying to be of service to others along the way. FOSS often seems more of a passion project for the creator(s) than an anarchist/communist project, IMHO - although there are obvious parallels.

Only problem with communism is that humans are unable to practice it without turning to fascistic practices. As an idea it is beautiful. “To each according to their needs.”

Not Communism in a political sense. More like community based, friendly software.

Open Source as in transparent or non proprietary.

There are some people who are in it for what you've listed (flattened hierarchy, worker owned, etc) but there are others who are in it for personal ownership and control, which may align better w/ a libertarian set of values, but you're not wrong about the ancom aspects

I do not.

FOSS is the natural conclusion of public code having a negligible cost to supply once it has been produced. Ideally it takes IP out of the equation and allocates compensation towards development rather than rent extraction.

FOSS is a question of centralization & authority vs decentralization & freedom.

BoringCactus wrote a tentative post-mortem to "open source"/free software (five-and-a-half years ago already?!) that I find/found interesting and somewhat relevant to your question.

Yep, and that's why I use it.

If we take the words of Saint Richard Stallman as true in the sense that in his day all software developmet was 'open' but at some point some decided for whatever reason to start "closing" stuff then one could say all software development did not have any anarchist or communist intention in the beginning, it just turned profit-driven in the way.

Most of the systems that enslave us run on linux.

I had the same exact thought after Steve balmer called it communist cancer, but then I came to a conclusion. Open source, and fair source software is communist, but free software is not. Free is as freedom and not price. You can make money off of it, but why is it different than OSS. The difference is that Free software protects the user's rights as opposed to OSS. Protecting the user's rights and freedoms is important.

In Soviet Russia, code programs you!

I used to think so. It's ideologically sound except for allowing corporations the same free use as anyone else. There are plenty of forward thinking people who would never want to support the oppressive evil of massive technology corporations and would never intentionally help them. Then they publish free software and directly help them anyway. It's not a coincidence that most "free" software is funded by the US tech industry who is directly benefited from it. I'm not sure of a way to change it that would help regular people faster than it helps private industry crush regular people.

Yes. It is pretty much exactly how we would do software development.

I think that communism-capitalism are very inadequate dimensions for discribing the world.

I'm definitively printing this and putting it on my wall