Malaga Manifesto 2008-10-22

Malaga Manifesto

Question:
How do we form communities, participatory groups, that are self-sustainable? For in the last two days we've heard many discussions about how this or that gov't is supporting Libre Software. But we have heard no solutions to this, besides making the source available. That seems to me just another way of looking to the market for solutions. And I do not think that works.
So what I would like to propose here is the draft of a manifesto on the formation of sustainable participatory communities. I use the term “participatory” because FOSS is specific to software, but we all know, at least we all want to believe that libre software communities are but one instance.
The principles:
• Do today what can be done tomorrow and the day after, or planning for the future in every act. This means that it's indefensible to pollute your local environment (or even your neighbour's) because that kills the future, yours and his.
• Do things in the consciousness of others (con la conscienca de los otros). This means that you have to engage others in what you do. The future is like another country, and it could be near or far. We wont' last forever, Kurzweill or not; and what we do, if we want to engage others, and I think we do, as the age of gross egotism is dead, I hope, must be done in ways that enable others to sit at the same table as you. Call this the commensal principle, and it is the hope of the commons.

(Forget about forgetting the past or declaring history bunk; capitalism's short memory is our long life. Razing the past to build the future never works because the past remembers us even as we try to forget it in the fiction of the present and future.)

• Do what you can now, and don't wait for some sign, revolution, spectacle of catastrophe. We have the tools to act, we have the sense, and we all know what has to be done. But I at least don't want local communities of fascists acting on the spur of their own distorted beliefs. I want communities of freedom, based on the principles of individual freedom and responsibility and acting in conjunction with others.
Freedom and responsibility, communities of freedom: Freedom without responsibility is a version of what the Victorians would derisively call the American "Do as you like" ideology. Freedom without responsibility is the death of community, and we can see some fine examples of it today, in the blood money flooding Wall Street and now Main Street. (What me worry? ideology, is another way of putting it, if flippant.)
The inverse, responsibility without freedom doesn't work, it's fascism. We've had enough of that and it always keeps nations, people down, benighted. Consider it community without possibility, an impossible community. The goal is rather liberty and community, community and liberty, not one or the other, and one not privileged over the other. (If the American revolution brought liberty without the claim of community--the US got federation, instead--the French revolution introduced the necessity of community as a crucial element of freedom. But as history has shown, it's a balance, a negotiation, a narrative. And elements of the triad gt lost. This is why I believe we need to renew that social contract, revive the egalité, fraternité, liberté as goals and practices.)
So, I assert--the need for developing communities of liberty for establishing sustainable systems of production. This is true whether we speak of energy, food, or Foss, and in practice, each instance will have its own archive of examples, contexts, but one logical effect would be to respect local markets, wisdom and to connect disparate communities, for as the Málaga conference shows, the world is connected

Liberty / Community and Málaga 2008: OSWC

I wanted to write mostly on the Open Source World Conference, OSWC, which takes place this year n Málaga, Spain. But I present later on today, Tuesday, and thought I'd go over some points I want to raise in my presentation. These also riff on a discussion that I had with Simon Phipps last night after the panel on sustainability. He argued, quite powerfully ad lucidly, for the fundamental importance of freedom in the architecture of social and technological communities.

About the conference: At least 8,000 people, with huge numbers of students, government officials, and business people. Software Libre, FOSS, is a serious thing here, and is not just a Libertarian act of independence or, far worse, a marketing afterthought predicated on the expectation of its own failure.

The theme this year is sustainability. As it happens, it's a theme I've been harping on for the last year or so, and have been trying to tie to green movements related to energy, food, manufacture. Green is totally the wrong term, of course, as it aligns the movement (not an ideology per se) to US ecological movements, and those are fatally flawed. They have their origins in 18th and 19th century aesthetic movements, and not in more politically defensible economics. I prefer the term "sustainable economics" as it implies several things:

* Do today what can be done tomorrow and the day after, or planning for the future in every act. This means that it's indefensible to pollute your local environment (or even your neighbour's) because that kills the future, yours and his.

* Do things with the consciousness of others: This means that you have to engage others in what you do. The future is like another country, and it could be near or far. We wont' last forever, Kurzweill or not; and what we do, if we want to engage others, and I think we do, as the age of gross egotism is dead, I hope, must be done in ways that enable others to sit at the same table as you. Call this the commensal principle, and it is the hope of the commons.

(Forget about forgetting the past or declaring history bunk; capitalism's short memory is our long life. Razing the past to build the future never works because the past remembers us even as we try to forget it in the fiction of the present and future.)

* Do what you can now, and don't wait for some sign, revolution, spectacle of catastrophe. We have the tools to act, we have the sense, and we all know what has to be done. But I at least don't want local communities of fascists acting on th espur of their own distorted beliefs. I want communities of freedom, based on the principles of individual freedom and responsibility and acting in conjunction with others.

Freedom and responsibility, communities of freedom: Freedom without responsibility is a version of what the Victorians would derisively call the American "Do as you like" ideology. Freedom without responsibility is the death of community, and we can see some fine examples of it today, in the blood money flooding Wall Street and now Main Street. (What me worry? ideology, is another way of putting it, if flippant.)

The inverse, responsibility without freedom doesn't work, I tend to believe, and seems a lot like the Victorian Era. Consider it community without possibility, an impossible community. The goal is rather liberty and community, community and liberty, not one or the other, and one not privileged over the other. (If the American revolution brought liberty without the claim of community--the US got federation, instead--the French revolution introduced the necessity of community as a crucial element of freedom. But as history has shown, it's a balance, a negotiation, a narrative. And elements of the triad gt lost. This is why I believe we need to renew that social contract, revive the egalité, fraternité, liberté as goals and practices.)

So, I argue--or I guess, assert--the need for developing communities of liberty for establishing sustainable systems of production. This is true whether we speak of energy, food, or Foss, and in practice, each instance will have its own archive of examples, contexts, but one logical effect would be to respect local markets, wisdom and to connect disparate communities, for as the Málaga conference shows, the world is connected.

13 October 2008: Paris Launch Party for OpenOffice.org

Quite possibly the most interesting honour bestowed upon OpenOffice.org was capitalized by the launch party held in the government offices of the Île-de-France, in Paris. At least 600 registered for the event, and at least half that showed up, no doubt for the speeches, including mine, and the Region's deputy's, M. Lepinski, and Charles Schulz'; and also for the terrific buffet and wine.

The Region is moving strongly toward FOSS and OOo in particular, and has a brilliant program to distribute upward 400K USB keys with OOo installed. That's just a start. There are 11M people in the Region, effectively the MTA of Paris, and, why not....? free software, and especially free productivity software, is a superlative investment, in the present and also the future. Free software, like OOo, empowers--to use the old term--people to engage in modern economic and cultural discourse.

The Francophone project is hugely involved in this migration. Under Sophie Gautier's lead, it succeeded in placing OpenOffice.org, in French, in the hands of hundreds of thousands and in inspiring hundreds of contributors. Under the current lead, Jean-Baptiste Fauré and Tony Galmiche, the work not only continues but has seemingly accelerated.

I've appended below the text of my speech in French and in English. My thanks to Charles for translating the speech from the English. I had tried writing it in French, and though it came out okay, it sounded, risible. Not so Charles'.

First, the English, then the French.


13 October 2008
Paris, Île-de-France

-Louis Suarez-Potts


My thanks to the President of the Region Île-de-France, Silicon Sentier, Charles Schulz, and the people of Paris who have worked together to make this event so splendid and such a wonderful celebration of community and social responsibility. I am proud to be here among you.

This is an historic occasion. We celebrate this evening not just the eighth birthday of OpenOffice.org, not just the 50 years since the founding of the Fifth Republic and its promise of a more rational government, but we also celebrate the great success of a vast community outside of government, outside of business, but essential to both.

We celebrate the people who make OpenOffice.org what it is, as a fact, but also what it means as a promise. For it is a means of communication, a theatre of collaboration. It promises a future in which the anxieties of monopoly, of proprietary license, of language, and ultimately of dependency and isolation are banished. This fact and promise of autonomy and freedom are what OpenOffice.org means for 100 million, if not more. And this is why it has become the theatre in which the intellectual and commercial freedom for so many is being enacted by those who are not mere spectators but the drama's authors and performers, too.

Tonight, and every day and night there is work done on OpenOffice.org, we, the Community, renew the social contract. And we make it new and modern. Elsewhere, in the last few decades we have seen it fade in importance. Social responsibility and an understanding of the consequences of actions taken today for others now and in the future has nearly disappeared in the haze of blind self interest. We must change that, and are changing it. The consciousness of others, the awareness of our effects, on people, just as on nature, today and tomorrow, nearby or far away, is not an ideological luxury but a necessity.

For we have seen that in the absence of a modern social contract we act as if fire does not burn nor wood char, and are then surprised to find not the mansion of our dreams but ashes.

I refer of course to the spectacle of capitalism's conflagration we have witnessed this last month—that we continue to witness--and to the lesson that we can take from it: That liberty without fraternity produces fierce catastrophe. And into this catastrophe we have been thrust as actors without a script.

Equal, fraternal, collaboration gives us that script. Building something together, of mutual benefit and interest answers the questions raised by the Crisis: What do we do now, in the spectacle of capitalism's aftermath? We work together locally, with global consciousness, aware that we exist in a community that is not limited by mountains or oceans but only by the reach of our ambition.

Free software marks the line of division between the ancien régime and this, our modern world. In that past, conventions hostile to free collaboration prevailed. In this modern age we greet tonight, we must collaborate on solving the urgent problems of intellectual property, food, energy, climate change: on all that makes up our world, our society. Together, as we see here tonight, our living is the joy of shared success.

On behalf of OpenOffice.org, I thank you.


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13 October 2008
Paris, Île-de-France

-Louis Suarez-Potts
Je voudrais remercier le Président de la Région Ile de France, Silicon Sentier, Charles Schulz et tous les Franciliens qui ont travaillé ensemble pour célébrer de la façon la plus magnifique la Communauté et les valeurs sociales universelles. Je suis fier d'être parmi vous ce soir.

Nous assistons ce soir à un moment historique. Ce que nous célébrons ce soir, ce n'est pas juste le huitième anniversaire d'OpenOffice.org, ce n'est pas seulement les 50 ans d'existence de la 5ème République et sa promesse d'un gouvernement plus rationnel, mais ce que nous fêtons ce soir, c'est le succès planétaire d'une vaste communauté existante en dehors de gouvernements, d'entreprises, mais qui est pourtant essentielle aux deux.

Ce soir, nous rendons hommage à tous ces gens qui ont fait d'OpenOffice.org ce qu'il est, comme un projet établi, et ce qu'OpenOffice.org signifie en tant qu'ambition. Car OpenOffice.org n'est pas juste un moyen de communication, ou un théâtre de collaboration; non, OpenOffice.org promet aussi un future dans lequel les angoisses et la pression de grands monopoles privés, de licenses et de code propriétaires et pour finir, les menaces de dépendance et d'isolation seront bannies. Notre promesse et notre engagement pour la Liberté et l'Indépendance est déjà une réalité pour plus de 100 millions de personnes à travers le monde.Et c'est pourquoi nous sommes devenus le point central, la scène sur lesquelles les libertés intellectuelles aussi bien que commerciales peuvent s'exprimer et ont été garanties par ceux qui ne sont pas de simples spectateurs, mais les acteurs et auteurs de cette pièce.

Ce soir, comme tous les autres journées et soirs, le travail continue sur OpenOffice.org et nous, la Communauté, renouvellons à chaque fois le contrat social. Nous le renouvellons et le modernisons. Ailleurs, ce contrat a vu son importance décliner lors de ces dernières décénnies. La responsibilité sociale et une compréhension de ce que les actions d'aujourd'hui impliquent pour demain ont pratiquement disparu dans les nuées aveugles des intérêts personels. Nous devons changer cela, et sommes en train de le changer. La conscience des autres, celle de nos actions et de leurs effets sur les gens et sur la nature, aujourd'hui et demain, à courte ou à longue échéance, n'est plus un luxe idéologique mais une nécessité.

Car nous avons vu l'évidence, qu'en l'absence d'un contrat social nous agissons comme si toutes choses étant égales par elle-mêmes, et nous nous surprenons à ne trouver que des cendres à la place de la villa de nos rêves.

Je fais bien sûr référence au triste spectacle de la déflagration du capitalisme à laquelle nous avons assisté ce mois-ci, et à laquelle nous continuons à assister- et à la leçon que nous pouvons en tirer. Cette leçon est que la liberté sans la fraternité ne conduit qu'à la catastrophe. Et c'est dans cette catastrophe que nous avons été jetés comme des acteurs sans leur script.

Le logiciel libre marque la frontière entre l'ancien régime, et celui-ci, notre monde moderne. Dans le passé, les pactes hostiles à la collaboration libre ont prévalu. Dans ce nouvel âge que nous saluons ce soir, nous devons travailler ensemble à résoudre l'urgence posée par les problèmes de la propriété intellectuelle, par le manque de nourriture, d'énergie, et des changements climatiques: en bref, sur tout ce qui fait notre monde et notre société. Ensemble, comme nous le sommes ce soir, nous nous incarnons dans la joie du succès partagé.

Au nom d'OpenOffice.org, Je vous remercie.

OpenOffice.org 3.0

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is far more than just the latest version of OOo. It's also the beginning of a new age for productivity suites. Why? Because OOo 3l0 takes a huge step toward the real future of desktop productivity. It uses extensions and it expresses its data in an open standard; these we know, though we are only now beginning to appreciate their importance. And it also works beautifully with the latest suites, including MS Office 2007.

The result is more than an alternative that's free and that frees. It is a new way of doing things, one that builds on the commons held now by tens of millions living everywhere on this globe. It is a way that trusts the wealth of the commons and imagines a world where the impoverishing effects of vendor lockin are a thing of the past.

Vendor lockin means being stuck with the vendor who sold you your application because all your files are in the format used by that application. It means you can only communicate fully with others who share your vendor. It means that monopoly is the most logical outcome.

OOo bypasses that problem by using an open standard, the OpenDocument format. Both proprietary and free applications can use it, and they do. Even MS Office supports it, via a plug in. The net result is a world where the free exchange of information is not just possible but very likely, as it is no longer impeded by proprietary concerns.

OOo 3.0 adds to that freedom by using extensions much the same way that Firefox does: it gives all users the freedom to add new features, functionality. At present, we have a couple of hundred, and they have proved popular. We've also done minimal advertising. I anticipate that in the coming months, as 3.0 gains yet more popularity (all servers are down at the moment), there will be more and more interesting extensions out there.

I can see extensions that radically depart from what we consider "office" tools---and why not? OOo is an integrated set of tools based on fairly conservative conceptions of office software. But there is no compelling reason to stick with the conservative past, and every reason to be creative.

So, let's be creative together.