Free labor, Peter Kropotkin, and Yochai Benkler

Having arrived at your article, "Getting Rich Off Those Who Work for Free", from an Open Source portal, I regret (a little) to inform you the Free/Open Source software (FOSS) types are spurning your association of FOSS with anarchy. And I must say that it is a very poor comparison. Not only are the majority of FOSS developers not working for free, there is a strong hierachical structure in most projects--meritocritous to be sure, but strong nevertheless.

A much better comparison would be with the scientific community. Pure research does not directly result in marketable products, but those scientists who pursue it are not working for free. Similarly, FOSS projects are usually started to solve an immediate problem, and as such are not intended to be broadly applicable enough to be marketable.

However, by sharing (not giving away) the source code (analogous to scientific theories), others may take the original solution and add some useful features or correct some bugs that occur in different environments. If this happens, then eventually the project may grow to attract enough users to require a support structure. At this point, funding becomes an issue. Some projects are able to survive on donations, others have found corporate sponsorship (donating equipment or employing developers to work full time on the project), while some have built a business of offering services based on the core software.

Another up and coming type of FOSS project is that in which a group of people or organizations with a common interest contribute to applications for that interest. An example of this is libraries which are developing software on their own instead of depending on vendors whose profit motive drives them to focus on the most lucrative features, as opposed to the most useful ones.

It is a mistake to focus on the money issues (or lack thereof) surrounding FOSS software. This leads to incorrect characterizations of the development methodology which, I suspect, is a result of the rise of software vendors. This special interest group would like you to believe that their development/business model is prevalent and has been so since the beginnings of computer technology.

However, that was not true then and is still not true today. I have heard that some 80% - 90% of computer applications are developed inhouse. I do not know how accurate this is, but having worked in IT for over 20 years, I know that I have spent most of my career adding capabilities to vendor products (using their macro languages, for example) or developing utilities where no such products exist. And for the past 10 years, having a treasure trove of FOSS projects to jumpstart my efforts has made me far more productive.

Finally, in case you or your readers were not already aware of it, the majority of the software that makes the Internet function is Free/Open Source. And while very few businesses are making money from the Internet, a huge number are making money because of it. This is why the position of the FOSS community is that software, to a large extent, should be a means to an end, not an end in itself (although I will confess that I have found beauty in some code).

Justin, thank you for the thought-provoking article. Immediately after reading your article, I read on a Google blog that they are going to hold a conference on scalability. This seems to me to be another form of the gift economy. Google is using its reputation to attract top minds to provide well-researched and leading thinking about Google's top business problem -- scalability. One of Google's competitive advantages is their ability to scale their search infrastructure, so holding a conference where the top minds contribute their best thinking around the topic all for the cost of a lunch sounds like a very good deal for Google. For the participants, they will get the chance to have their thinking strengthened through participation and maybe get hired by Google if they demonstrate enough chops. To me, this is a result of an unequal power relationship and a naivete on the participants side about the value of their work.
This line of thinking can be more broadly extended to university research. Many large companies (not just Google) leverage university research as the basis to build profitable technologies. The universities are starting to catch on to this and have started technology transfer offices in order to recapture much of these economics that were going out the door.
Lastly, as a thought on JJS's post above, I find his quote interesting: "Not only are the majority of FOSS developers not working for free, there is a strong hierachical structure in most projects--meritocritous to be sure, but strong nevertheless."
Hmm...hierarchical with for-profit motivations...what exactly is the difference with a corporation?

You have Kropotkin wrong. You need to read his book on Mutual Aid, or at least an article on it to understand what he was talking about. The issue in mutual aid is that cooperation, or more specifically mutual aid is an innate function. That is we have a natural instinct to work together to protect our species group. Kropotkin believed that this was perhaps the critical aspect in adaptation (emphasizing adaptation over Huxley's emphasis on natural selection, which tends to be more individualist oriented). Kropotkin would never suggest individuals work for free. As a matter of fact Kropotkin would probably think that this was not a good thing, because those who work for free would have less of a chance of surviving (and those carrying cooperative tendencies would disappear).

Kropotkin would break the issue down in a much different way. There are those who want to work for the betterment of the species (similar to what Aristotle call phronesis) and the free riders. Given an opportunity members of a species group would work together to promote the species. But they basically have to see how the actions will promote the species group. Those who work in open source then are not working for free, they are working for their own benefit because they are working to make their species group better at critical activities.

It is true that free riders will skim off the top and try to take as much as they can in times of plenty. But in the end they have a more meager existence. If you would like to talk more about this let me know. In the meantime here is reference and a URL (URI) to an article I wrote on Kropotkin that might give you some insight in to the who issue.

Mutual Aid Theory and Human Development: Sociability as Primary
Author: Glassman M.1

Source: Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, Volume 30, Number 4, December 2000, pp. 391-412(22)

Publisher: Blackwell Publishing

Hi Justin- Thanks for the article. I think the economics are trying to peek through from the cloud of what's existed for the last 100+ years haven't really solidified. There are lots of people contributing for "free," but imagining (hoping!) that some kind of compensation/reward/sustenance model is coming soon (hoping!).

As a blogger/videoblogger, I create tons of copy and plenty of video for free, and though I don't compete with paid journalists, I take time and attention away from people who get paid to write for publications (at least in the aggregate). I think something has to shift, but as for the how? I failed economics and all other matters of finance badly.

But suffice to say your article moved me. I haven't read Time in years, definitely not in print. Thanks for making an article worth my.. wait for it... time.

Carr is a pragmatist, Benkler is a utopian - it's not hard to guess who's going to win this bet.

This "media revolution" seems to be concentrating power back into the hands of the few. Only large corporations can afford to employ the best FOSS developers (as JJS correctly points out), only large corporations can afford to sue for copyright violations, and only large corporations have the economies of scale to drive down wages.

Read this essay about how photojournalism has been gutted -

How the anti-copyright lobby makes big business richer

So much for user empowerment, Dr Benkler.

A very good example of what you are talking about, Justin, lies in the area of DNA testing for genealogical work and population studies. I have been running the Y-DNA Fox Surname Project for two years now - essentially contributing my time and effort for nothing - and, while I had a personal motivation initially, I now find myself trying to help other Foxes find their relatives. In turn, I'm helping the testing labs get customers. My main reward is meeting interesting people with similar interests and the satisfaction that comes from discovering a connection. Of course, I'm retired so I have the time to do this.

I'm not the only one. Take a look at the Genealogy-DNA mailing list at Rootsweb. There are some real experts on this list who are devoting a great deal of time and energy to the analysis of Phylogenic data and they are doing it for free.

In case anyone's wondering, "Dad" is in fact my Dad.

On the Carr-Benkler wager, I'll take Carr. As previous posters have noted, "work for free" is not quite right.

Take Benkler himself. He's not working for free, he's getting paid by Yale, and probably quite well. Insurance. Pension. Free tuition for kids. That kind of thing.

And Yale is happy to do it, because they're not working for free either. They're getting a massive image update from the alma mater of a C+ president to the home of the newly hip. As they say, priceless.

This is just an example of early stage industrial development--analogous to seed capital, angel investing or venture capital. The risk and the return are absorbed by third parties at the beginning, and only later does it get matched up with the source of wealth.

I recall that AOL in its early days ran quite a bit on the help of volunteers, sysops. I haven't checked in a long time, but it wouldn't surprise me that "sysop" as a volunteer category has been largely subsumed by non-volunteers.

I am thrilled to see Kropotkin show up in Time Magazine. I think the comment that brought in "Mutual Aid" is a helpful addendum. Kropotkin was an anarchist, but a communitarian one. He based his theories on observation of natural phenomena (being a respected naturalist), and concluded that cooperation was as natural as competition.

The reason that idea did not become as powerful as the dumbed-down version of Darwinism has a lot more to do with the prevailing political situations in the West which, for example, needed a justification for privatizing land away from communal structures (in the West and in the colonial era), and had a lot invested in a system based in competition over cooperation.

the point isn't that folks work for free, but that a reward system based on individual competition within the project for that reward may not always be most efficient.

I think our responding to this article is a great example of this gift economy. I believe mine is the tenth response to your article, Justin. As a blogger, I understand what it means when someone takes the time to add value to your writing by responding. Why do we do it? Because there is something in human nature that is inherently creative. We find value in adding our voice to something worthwhile because we believe our voice means something...and that's enough.

Your article reminds me of Don Tapscott's new book “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.” He has some interesting things to say about the changes in thinking that will define the new economy.

For instance, Tapscott argues that instead of the neomcarthyist efforts of the recording industry to hunt down those who make illegal copies of their music, why not recognize that these evangelists are helping to popularize their music and find ways to exploit that?

At any rate, I think Tapscott's book would be a useful dialogue partner. http://wikinomics.com/book/