FWD: Free software movement in Germany

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

An interview with Stefan Merten, a member of the so called "Free 
Software"-Movement in Germany.There will be a free software conference next 
weekend in Dortmund. I'll be there. Perhaps of interest.

Kurt-Werner Pörtner
 Interview with Stefan Merten

By Geert Lovink

Oekonux is a radical German mailinglist discussing free software from
green-alternative and post-Marxist perspectives. The tone on the list is
unusually open, not to say utopian. There is a true sense of
possibilities felt: a free software revolution; revolution through free
software. This weekend the Oekonux list is holding its first conference,
in the grey, industrial city of Dortmund. Stefan Merten is the initiator

and moderator of the list and co-organizer of the upcoming conference.

GL: Could you tell us the history and context of the Oekonux list and
OpenTheory site that you are running?

SM: Your question gives me the nice opportunity to correct a rather
common misunderstanding. I, Stefan *Merten*, am maintaining the Oekonux
project, while Stefan *Meretz* maintains OpenTheory. Though both of us
are involved in the other project, respectively, though we often have
similar views, and though our names are very similar, we are two
different persons with different backgrounds.

But now for the history and context of the Oekonux list and project.
Personally I had the idea that Free Software is something very special
and may have a big potential for a different society beyond labor,
money, exchange - in short: capitalism - in 1998. In September 1998 I
tried to make that an issue on the Krisis list. However, that didn't
work since next to nobody was interested.

In July 1999 there was the "Wizard of Open Source"
(`http://www.mikro.org/Events/OS/frameset_d.html?Submit=deutsch')
conference in Berlin. I attended that conference and was especially
interested in the topic "Neue Ökonomie?" ("New economy?"). However, on
the background of the idea mentioned above, I found the talks presented
there not very interesting. After the talks I took the opportunity to
organize a spontaneous BOF session and luckily it worked well. So we sat

there with about 20 people and discussed the thoughts presented in the
talks. At the end I asked all the people at the BOF session to give me
their e-mail address.

After the WOS conference the organizers of the conference (Mikro,
`http://www.mikro.org/') created a mailing list for us - and that was
the birth of the Oekonux (Oekonux stands for "OEKOnomie" and
"liNUX")mailing list. From the start we had a very interesting
discussion with some silent periods but usually rather much traffic. The
atmosphere on the list is very pleasant and flames are nearly unknown.
The discussion is focussed on content and covers a rather big number of
topics. At the moment we have about 160 subscribers at
`liste at oekonux.de'. Though the traffic is quite high we have nearly no
unsubscribe messages which I think is a proof for the quality of the
list.

As far as I can see the subscribers come from a quite wide range of
thinking traditions and areas of interest. Though of course they all
share a common interest in political thinking, there are people from the
Free Software and Hardware area as well as hard core political people as
well as people with a main interest in culture and so on. Thinking about
one and a half year back, our discussion made big advances and though we

have some very skeptical people on the list, today there seems to be a
common sense and common understanding, that we might have a very valid
and important point.

In December 1999 I created the web site `www.oekonux.de'. It's main
purpose is to archive the mailing list. Of course some material created
in the realm of the project is presented there also as well as a link
list listing links to web sites and pages relevant to our discussion in
some way. There is also an English / international part of the project
(`www.oekonux.org' archiving `list-en at oekonux.org'), which, however, is
nearly non-existent until today. I find this a pity but unfortunately
until now there is nobody with enough free time and energy to give this
part a real start. So until today all the material is in German. In June
2000 I created another mailing list (`projekt at oekonux.de') which is
concerned with the organization of the project. Meanwhile we have some
people there who are really working and so reduce my personal load and
responsibility for the project.

Currently the project team is mainly concerned with the first Oekonux
conference (`http://www.oekonux-konferenz.de/') we will have from April
28-30, 2001 in Dortmund. The conference's main goal is to bring together
people from different areas all interested in the principles of Free
Software and are thinking about possible consequences these principles
may have in their particular area. We'll have people from the Free
Software movement, political persons, people with a scientific
background, people interested in cultural things, people involved in
Free Hardware projects and so on. I think it'll be a very exciting
conference and another milestone in the way we and - if we're not
completely wrong - the whole world is going.

GL: The relation between Marxism and open source is a highly debated
topic on Oekonux. For some this might be a unusual combination. There
are even discussions about general principles of a "GPL society",
extending the legal framework of free software into a variety of social
and economic fields. That's pretty ambitious, not to say utopian, with
the fall of the Berlin Wall a little over a decade ago. Don't you think
that it would be better to debunk failed leftist principles than to come
up with new ones?

SM: The question is what leftist principles are. Personally, I think
Marx created a very good and still very valid analysis of capitalism. Of
course some of his thoughts must be brought into a contemporary
perspective, but that doesn't make them worthless. However, rethinking
Marx in the framework of the world of today is something leftists of all
currents seldom do. In the history of workers movement there are very
few exceptions and most currents concentrated on other things. Leninism
and Stalinism had further negative influence on rethinking Marx in an
adequate way. Even the people calling themselves "Marxians" are rarely
very interesting. My main criticism to the very most of those leftist
(Marxian) currents in the past is there lack of a utopia. The "utopia"
they had was not more than an improved labor society rather similar to
the one they lived in.

Well, of course this analysis is very shortened and omits a number of
points, but to defend earlier leftist currents, I think they had one big
disadvantage: They didn't live at the decay of capitalism where the new
society already starts to raise its head. In Oekonux there is a common
sense, that Free Software might be exactly this: an early form of the
new society embedded in the old society. (We call this new society "GPL
society" to have a word for this new thing we're trying to explore.) And
if you have some knowledge about Marx' theory you will note, that a lot
of phenomena fit perfectly into his analysis of capitalism and its
intrinsic contradictions which it can't overcome.

GL: Some on the Oekonux list seem close to the "Krisis group" around the
'apocalyptic' Marxist critic Robert Kurz. Could you explain to
outsiders, not familiar with contemporary German Marxist currents,
Kurz's position and what he has got to do with Linux, open source and
the network society?

SM: Well, the thinking of the Krisis group is manifold and not easy to
describe in a few sentences. They are not widely accepted in the German
leftist scene. In fact there are some people which you might call fans
and there is a big number of people which with some right you might call
enemies. However, my personal impression is, that the enemies of the
Krisis group mainly don't understand what the Krisis people are talking
about. This is a real pity because of this the Krisis people have nearly
no one to discuss with besides themselves.

May be the Krisis group's main position basing many of the others is,
that capitalism is on its decay because the basic movement of making
money from labor works less and less. Of course this doesn't mean that
capitalism must end soon. Of course capitalism may continue to exist for
hundred of years. But it won't ever be able to hold its old promises of
wealth for all.

In my opinion meanwhile this is clearly visible even in our Western
societies and I find it astonishing how good leftists are in defending
capitalism and expecting a long life of it. However, the reality of
capitalism is apocalyptic - take the climate catastrophe as one of the
most visible and dangerous signs. In some way it's not fair to call the
Krisis position "apocalyptic" just because they say how things are.

The relation of the Krisis group to Free Software is non-existent. I
tried to talk with Robert Kurz about that once in a while a few years
ago, but learned that this is simply something he isn't concerned with
and doesn't know anything about. However, at the start of December 2000
there was a workshop with Stefan Meretz and Robert Kurz in Dortmund,
which I attended as well. This was the first time I think Robert Kurz
was really confronted with the thoughts discussed in Oekonux and I think
he understood a number of points. Maybe there are new developments to
expect.

GL: Development of open source software seems to be particularly
successful amongst Germans, so it seems. Statistically, Germans come
second after the Americans. Would you know of any specific cultural
explanation?

SM: First of all I question how meaningful the figure is as a basis for
your question. Germany is the country with the biggest population in
Europe. To have a really meaningful figure you need to calculate the
number of German free software developers per capita of the German
population and compare that with the same figures for other countries.

Besides that I guess that the share of people with academic education is
quite high in relation to some other European countries which are among
the most industrialized countries of the world. In addition the English
language is pretty well known in Germany - opposed to e.g. Japan. So the
preconditions in Germany to enter the free software scene are relatively

good and the high absolute numbers simply may be a result of these good
preconditions.

GL: It strikes me that participants on the Oekonux list are not that
much worried about attempts of certain IT-companies such as IBM to gain
control over the production of open source software. Could you explain
this worry-less optimism?

SM: Well, I guess most people on the Oekonux list don't recognize IBM's
activities as to gain control over the free software scene. I think IBM
and some other companies simply start to understand, that they should
better not slaughter the cow they want to milk in the future. Many of
these companies are mainly hardware manufacturers or sell services and
they have their own good reasons to have a flourishing free software
scene. They seem to understand that they may break this with their
activities if they are not careful.

On the other hand in the past companies, who tried to exploit the free
software scene solely for their own advantage, had some bad experiences.
For instance the free software scene didn't like the activities of Corel
when they started to create their own distribution. Until now to my
knowledge at least no big player has been able to really betray the free
software scene. This is a result of the power the free software scene
itself already has today.

GL: Even on the Oekonux list the interests seem to be very much
focusedon open source related issues and not so much to create a wider
network.Many computer users are saying that open source will only become
a success if it is able to transcend the (male) geek culture of software
engineering, making alliances with interface designers, activists and
artists, cross-linking with broader cyber-cultures such as the games
communities. Do you think that the withdrawal into the technical is only
a temporary phenomena? When is the free software/open source movement
ready to break out?

SM: IMHO on the Oekonux list we are actively trying to see the whole
picture. The conference has its focus on exactly that: Bringing together
people from as many professions as possible who are all interested in
the model of free development the free software is only the most visible
example of. On the other hand we are talking of a new model of goods
production in general, which transcends the industrial model. So it is
clear, that a big part of the picture has to be technical and that
people with knowledge in engineering of any kind play an important role
in that picture.

GL: Yes, this is what you and others call the "GPL society." Could you
explain this? Isn't free software and open source more like a source of
inspiration and metaphor rather than a model for the entire society with
all its complex relations? The digital economy itself is everything but
open source. The Internet Economy is all about accumulating intellectual
property. What makes you think that the free/open source models can go
beyond the realm of software production?

SM: With GPL society we describe a society beyond capitalism. The main
difference is, that this society is no longer based on exchange and
exchange value and thus the term labor doesn't make much sense any
longer. Instead the basis of this new society will be the individual
self-unfolding ("Selbstenftaltung") combined with self-organization and
global cooperation. Goods in this society are not sold but simply
available and taken by those who need them. Of course such a society is
difficult to imagine for people who grew up with only money on their
mind.

To my knowledge the historical new thing of this concept is, that the
GPL society will transcend the industrial model of production into a new
form, which allows human potential to really flourish. In particular the
work machines are doing is actually used for setting people free in the
sense that the machines do the necessary things while humans can be
artists, engineers, ... whatever they like. This way the permanently
rising productivity no longer results in the curse of unemployment but
in the benediction of freedom from the necessity for mankind. A world
where the individual freedom of each single person is the precondition
for the freedom of all.

These aspects of absence of exchange value (i.e. money), self-unfolding,
self-organization, and global cooperation are the ones in the Oekonux
project we recognize in the principles of free software development.
Indeed many people on the Oekonux list think free software is a germ
form of the GPL society. Insofar it is much more than a metaphor,
because the analysis of the phenomenon of free software constantly
brings up new aspects which often can be transformed into a different
organization of a society very well. Actually I'm astonished over and
over again how good this works.

Of course we don't have a full-blown concept in our drawers how the new
society will look like - and we better should not have such a drawing
table model IMHO. Of course today there are many questions which can't
be answered honestly. However, it is possible to think about this GPL
society and which trends in the presence may extend and lead us into
this GPL society. Indeed given the frame work of Oekonux you can find a
number of aspects already existing today, which may also be seen as germ

forms. For instance, NGOs share a number of interesting aspects with the
development of free software and may be seen as a non-technical
counterpart among the germ forms for the GPL society. And even in the
midst of capitalism you can see how the production process more and more
depends on information.

Today the material side of material production is rather unimportant
even in capitalism. And information is something very different from the
material world simply by the fact that you can copy it without losing
the original. What is known as the new/Internet/digital economy is
indeed the plain old money economy on new territories. What this economy
does is to try
to make profit from things which are inherently not profitable. The v