Communism
Communism is a word that is very often misused by right-wingers as “no toothbrush” or “the worst”, when it is nowhere close to that definition. The official definition of communism is:
A classless, stateless and moneyless society where the workers control the means of production.
There are no “means of production” in FOSS (except for computers and text-editors), so I will be going with another definition for our “FOSS-Communism”:
A classless (which in our case means “no one is better than another”), stateless (which in our case means no BDFLs [Benevolent Dictator For Life(s)] and no core leadership) and moneyless (which relates to the “classless” part, but also means “no oligarchs” and depending on your decision “no donations”) society where the workers (developers) control the means of production (being pull-requests and code-contributions, which is a core part in FOSS anyways).
Also, to clarify: I am a communist (or a Marxist, to be precise) and I have my biases. Keep that in mind.
Marxocracy
So now, why would FOSS-communism be a better way of running a FOSS-project than Fossarchy or Mossarchy (see FOSS-culture)? Well, let’s disect the formal definition (which by “formal” I mean “provided from the top of my head”), part by part:
Core definition
A classless (which in our case means “no one is better than another”)
This should clearly be good. If you have any form of empathy: You know this is good. Everybody – in a formal or informal development environment – should always be equal.
stateless (which in our case means no BDFLs [Benevolent Dictator For Life(s)] and no core leadership)
BDFLs are a fundamentally totalitarian idea that should never be excercised in any environment. This includes FOSS. And no core leadership is a good idea since that could easily lead to BDFLs.
moneyless (which relates to the “classless” part, but also means “no oligarchs” and depending on your decision “no donations”)
Oligarchies are very bad, that’s a part of why the US is very bad. They lead to corruption yet it’s basically a core part of capitalism. “No donations” are a different story since it’s basically about your political stance on earning money for FOSS.
the workers (developers) control the means of production (being pull-requests and code-contributions, which is a core part in FOSS anyways).
Yes, this part is a core part of FOSS, and therefore it should not be a shock that I’m including it in this ideal “FOSS ideology”. FOSS-communism is a very bad name for an ideology though, and thus I propose “Newage-Marxism” or “Marxocracy”. I’ll be going with “Marxocracy” (because of it being the governing-system version of marxism) but in reality it doesn’t matter.
Direct democracy
Another part of Marxocracy I want to emphasize is direct democracy, all people wanting to vote for a new feature in your project: Shall. The optimal way to run this is trough ranked-choice voting, where you present the voters with 3+ options to choose from which the voters then rank. Every voter shall give all options a score from 1-x where x is the amount of options, you then award the choices the amount (of votes) that the voter has given it, the choice with the most votes win and shall be added.
Benefits
Marxocracy provides a whole lot of benefits that other governance-ideologies don’t provide (such as Oligarchy and Dictatorship). I have provided a list below for all people wanting to see the benefits:
- People are happy - Being able to vote for new features in your project will surely make them happy.
- Immune against oligarchs - People wanting to puppeteer your project wont be able to if you either set a limit on the amount a single person can donate to you, or ban donations entirely.
- Everyone is equal - With no core leadership and no oligarchs everybody will be equal.
These benefits clearly outline some of the great things about Marxocracy.