You can tell when I'm procrastinating by the number of posts I make to my blog.

One idea I had for an essay topic for my Marxism class was to discuss open-source software and how it may have some sort of relationship with Marxism. The thing is, I don't think there is anything in particular Marxist about open-source software. People talk about how with open-source software the money is being made by selling services, but this is true with closed source software as well. There is just something slightly different about having access to the actual product for free it seems.

I decided to see if anyone else has said anything on the matter. I think I missed a more interesting point, that this fellow brings up.

you can say that open source is the kind of revolt by the proletariat class on the capitalists that Marx said would eventually occur due to alienation.

you could also talk about how the nature of software, unlike a lot of other products, gives anyone full control over the means of production. open source could be compared to letting all the workers have a go at running the factory for a bit. that's probably a really bad analogy, but hopefully someone gets what i'm trying to say.

I popped my trackback cherry. Word up.