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A comment on FOSS and the sublimation of commodity fetishism. Parent comment

Re:FOSS and the sublimation of commodity fetishism by steveklabnik on Friday November 22, 2013 @11:46AM (#6781864)
I don't think this article attempts to provide solutions, only to 'add framing' to the problem.

> One of the things that FOSS allows is for anyone to produce a product without substantial investment of capital.

Absolutely! This is actually very in line with Marx's thinking.

After reading your last paragraph, I think your issue is that you want more than the article is attempting to give. I agree, we absolutely need these kinds of answers. I just don't think that it was ever intended to be presented here.

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Re:FOSS and the sublimation of commodity fetishism by lambda on Friday November 22, 2013 @11:52AM (#6781916)
Well, I think the article is explicitly going in the wrong direction, criticizing the basic idea of FOSS for causing these problems. The article seems to claim that because FOSS relies on labor that is unpaid upfront but rewarded by social capital, that it is inherently going to produce worse outcomes for less privileged groups. And I don't buy that.

So it's not just that I want more than the article gives (though I want that too; I would prefer that more potential solutions were presented), I'm also uncomfortable with the way it's framing the debate, indicating that this is an inherent failure in the FOSS model as opposed to a bug that should be fixed.

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