10 Jan 2002 dannu   » (Journeyer)

The current Samba and free software discussion are interesting. But I wished some more people knew of the award-winning theory of Christoph Spehr "Eine Grundlegung der freien Kooperation" german for "a foundation of free cooperations" or "collaboration".

One of the most fascinating things about this 60 page-paper is that he implicitly (and by the time unknowingly!) describes free software principles. Such as:

  • you can leave the group and receive no penalty

  • instead every "leaver" should be able to take something with him

  • it's fundamentally important that the negotiating partners in a free cooperation have equal negotiation power.

    In a sentence: partners are not equal and they can even make strange "contracts" but it must be based on as much as equal negotiation power as possible.

    A crucial question is whether freely collaborating groups can refuse to let an applicant join. The answer: yes they can! but it shouldn't lock out the person from satisfaction of basic needs.

    it remains undiscussed how these principles apply to e.g. the current samba case.

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