Re: Democratic Leadership

[Garreau\, Alexandre]

On 2014-12-02 at 00:51, Olaf Buddenhagen wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 11:17:59AM +0100, Garreau, Alexandre wrote:
>> The GNU system is aimed to free users. And in my humble opinion it
>> could better than other systems (the only really democratically
>> developped, development-diffused and upstream distro today is Debian,
>> and —as Mozilla Firefox— it’s not always making the best choices: see
>> GNOME3, systemd…).
>
> but as it's such a common misconception, I'd like to point out that
> democracy is only important for your freedom in domains where everyone
> *has* to live with the government's decisions.

“Common” misconception? “Yeah”, let me explain my “common”
misconception: it’s because if they don’t, they can choose, and in some
manner “vote” for what they use, privileging the best instead of
conditioning the imperfect. It’s a perfectly uncommon way of thought in
our liberal world.

_Disclaimer_: I use several times “free” in one of its commonly
conceived meaning, the negative meaning of freedom, the one of “totally
not constrained”, notably used in physics, and in liberal conception of
social myths like “free will”, “free choice” (meaning, respectively
“distinct will from reality”, and “not totally influenced choice”, since
this word which is usually positively connoted is used claim the
existence of something absurd, or rather the nonexistence of something
essential, I reuse it here to argue), not the positive one, the one of
“do what you want”, used in ethics, and to define “freedom” of free
software, notably its 4 freedoms (even if these are defined in a
negative way, “not stop to”). I know rms here really doesn’t like using
several meaning of important words like “free” because it leads to
division and can complexify free software discourse. So I precise I use
it here because I’m discussing with an already convinced public, and
that you can still s/free/unconstrained/ in your head ;)

That’s why most people argues when you can choose between one and
another producer, it’s not a problem to have hierarchy in it. That’s a
component of the moral, social and technical justification of capitalist
companies instead of democratic cooperatives.

See how Google, Apple, Microsoft are “democratic”, but, since we “can”
choose, it’s not a problem to have structures being (a) powerful,
(b) authoritarian and (c) growing, since you can still choose not to use
them. At least until it’s *possible* not to, it’s fine.

That’s also a justification of isolationism (that’s the liberal
conception of individualism at its best, it works until you can’t
continue to close your eyes): not our problem, let’s let people choose,
and let’s don’t care about the rest of the world :)

That’s mostly based on the negation of society and the faith in
individualism: nothing would be affected by nothing, “free will” at its
best. You suppose you can let the rest grow and evolve, and being able
to absolutely not be influenced by it if you choose not to (oh yeah:
humans are *perfectly rational*, and as say microeconomics: “actors are
rationals”, everything is based on that, we’re Free Conscious Thinking
Beings, not imperfect chaotic darwinian-evolution-powered animal brains,
we’re soul, not atoms, etc.).

So if USA doesn’t go in Europe, it’s not a problem letting Nazism grow
and continuing to follow normal market rules (selling weapons, etc.),
they will /never/ attack you, that would not be fairplay. And people
under Nazism are doing the Free and Independant Enlighted Choice of
staying under it, accepting its ideas. …and of having something like
about 98% of men (strangely at the time most mens thought women couldn’t
vote, and strangely yet I see a women proportion of something like… err…
like 0 here, in technical and political domains, that’s a coincidence
too, after all passion is casual, it comes from “free will” too, it’s a
big coincidence, it’s absolutely not socially constructed, and we don’t
live in a sexist world, and women are not unconsciously discouraged) who
voted for Hitler… and of course vote too is free will and is not
influenced by irrational social tradition, economical situation or
medias, it’s not as if in some countries votes were directly
proportional to the time passed on TV of each candidate (hint: here, in
France, it is). After all, there’s “free will”: their choices are
*absolutely not* influenced, biased, and their conception of things, of
society, rules, tradition, virtue, duty and purity is absolutely not
socially constructed. It doesn’t comes from sensible experience, it
comes from “soul”, from God, etc. And the winners have to win, that’s
the “Manifest Destiny”, it’s God choice, etc.

So if Google reads all its mail, it’s not a problem, we don’t use
it. It’s not as if 99% of our contacts did the choice of using
Google. And it’s not influenced by their completely rational faith in
Google, big corporations, and their ignorance of Free Software and its
ideas, it’s a completely free choice coming from free will.

If Microsoft has money to put Windows everywhere it’s not a problem, yet
people make a “free choice”, not influenced by the fact Microsoft paid
to put Windows everywhere.

And if NSA is spying everybody in the world, it’s… well, you are still
free to leave /Earth/. …and if you develop, I don’t know, a free system
to resist it, like GNUnet, or a whole free operating system.

> democracy is only important for your freedom in domains where everyone
> *has* to live with the government's decisions.

You don’t have to live with government decision. You can leave. You are
free, you can make that choice. You have a free will, independent from
reality. If this country decides to steal your rights, you can still
leave (not a problem that *all other country* are strangely doing the
same thing, it’s surely not a result of the combination of authority
with power, no, it’s surely a coincidence, like sexism, racism or
classism say, you know). If abortion is legal, even if there’s an
imposed thought delay of 11 months, you’re a free women and you own
your body :)

Some right-wing president who was doing extremely wrong work against
freedom (as are doing almost all presidents here) in France said “La
France on l’aime ou on la quitte”, it means “France, you like it or you
leave it”. It’s *precisely* that. You are free, your choices are free,
coming from “free will” (or “soul”), and independent from
reality. That’s the heart of this ideology.

> In the Free Software world on the other hand, it is generally quite
> feasible simply to move elsewhere if you don't like some project's
> decisions -- so there is no need for you to have an obligatory say in
> any particular project.

If *the* leading project of Free Software, *the* first free operating
system project, *the* leader/“guru” of free software, *the* chief of the
set of some of the best and more creative software projects of the
(open, visible) world, makes a choice, it’s not a problem, he’s not
influencing anybody, since they’re all making choices based on “free
will”, justified by… faith in soul, of course (doesn’t matter if this
person doesn’t has faith in it, he and others still has this omnipresent
conception derived of it that society doesn’t exist and that individuals
are an immaterial abstract thing completely independent from reality).

The reality is that when people take a decision and use means, this
decision has causes, and these means are constructed. So when something
happened, you can say if it was “possible/feasible” or
“impossible/infeasible”, it happened, period. It happened for reasons,
so you can’t say “it was feasible/possible”, that would be negating it
happened for reasons, those who say that are just basing that on some
“free will” conception, mostly coming from religion (but it can also be
justified without religion, with pure deism, or just justified
“because.” by some “atheist”, who still try means to negate materialism
being atheists) completely incompatible with things like materialism (no
soul exists, everything is matter).

So let’s everybody in a project is different, and not everybody is
identical, and yet project doesn’t divide in infinite parts: individuals
continue to organize together. Trying to determine if it’s “feasible” or
not is a fallacy: if conditions that make it happens happen, it happens,
otherwise it doesn’t happens, and for reasons. If it didn’t happens, it
couldn’t happen, if it happened, it couldn’t not happen. Sometimes it
happens, but the rest of time not. People are not all agreeing, and yet
they stay. Mainly because they *working collaboratively*, and that it’s
that that make them unite: being able to do more together than the sum
of all what we can make individually. So when you quit a project, you’re
losing, when a project divide, it’s a loss. It’s not “feasible”, if the
amount of negative impacts of division is greater than the gravity of
the dissensus, *it doesn’t happens*, and they’re no ontological
difference with “it’s not feasible”.

So if the GNU project makes a bad choice, you’re not “free” of leaving
it. You stay in it. Not for some free will deriving from an immaterial
soul or anything independent from reality. You stay in it because it
contains some of the most amazing project you can imagine and because
all the great hackers working on it are doing it here.

If a bad choice happens, it *is* negative. When rms makes a choice,
we’re all affected by it. If he makes an error, we’re all damaged. Even
if we knew it. Even if we *all*, or at least in majority, knew
it. That’s the burden of authority.

That’s also why some prefer to work in democratic structures.

> Also note that Debian is not actually democratic in any meaningful way:
> voting is limited to the select group of Debian Developers; while the
> vast majority of people affected by the project's decisions -- namely
> the "mere" users -- do not have any say.

“meaningful way”: its developers are not exploited nor controlled by a
Great Chief, by a Guide, a /Guru/, a /Duce/. It’s like the difference
between a cooperative and a company: workers collaboratively decide what
they *do*. And, since they’re chances their human beings, sensible to
others desires/complains, and with a minimal amount of intelligence,
it’s more likely that they’ll do what’s better for users than what’s
better for their power/profit.

As I said, it’s *democratically* developped. So what’s democratic is
Debian development, not Debian system. Developers are choosing what
*they* develop. Users don’t decide what developers develop. So yeah,
Debian system concerns those who are using it, but it concerns even
*more* those who are *making* it.

And yet those are trying to guess what’s best to give to users. The
recent problems with Debian doesn’t come from democracy, it comes from
the common thought with companies that you have to give people what you
think they *want* to come to you instead of what you think they *need*
to be more free (that’s what make the common problems of most companies
with freedom). Debian users want easy-to-use, less hackable and
potentially non-free system? Debian’s doing it.

I think Ubuntu influenced that. As GNOME was (it’s more or less the same
circle of developers around Ubuntu, GNOME and systemd, companies people,
who want to make buzz, make their work famous trough usual users and
“compete” with the market and its ideas, including derives like “cloud
computing”, that not long ago I saw several GNOME developers envy).

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