Re: [ox-en] WikiLeaks and peer production?

This is very interesting and seems to be more general. Often the leaders 
and in-groups of the free culture movement (thanks Alistair for the 
wikileaks/marx essay! I just translated it into Finnish) are less than 
transparent and less than ideally democratic (one thinks of Stallman, 
Wales, Assange, even Torvalds to an extent; can you name Linus' 
lieutenants?). This is, up to a point, sad for the individuals 
concerned, especially when compounded by fame & potentially fortune. 
However, as Alistair points out, on the level of the community or the 
movement the poison is diluted if not completely removed by the 
possibility of forking. (In some cases the personalities and in-groups 
do have considerable pull and forking is not a realistic option.)

Scott Lash has described (in the Critique of Information and other 
places) how the disorganisational nature of hacker communities nurtures 
or even necessitates charismatic leadership. Organisational, 
institutional leadership would be too rigid and without a foundation; 
therefore charismatic leadership is all there is. Maybe we have here 
another fortunate side-effect of post-scarcity: like free-riders, 
narcissistic leaders are not anymore a problem. They may even be an 
asset, because they get people involved.

On 2/9/11 4:24 AM, Alistair Davidson wrote:
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> Is this essential, though? Linux lacks formal democracy, but remains
> democratic in character due to the political economy - the communal nature
> of the output (eg the ability to fork and patch prevents non-consensual
> rule). And as we all know formal democracy can disguise tyranny. The
> emergence of other leaks sites suggests that in the medium-term, something
> similar will be true of these, and the ability of members to leave the
> organisation at will suggests that those who remain must be okay with what's
> going on. A project manager or editor is not a dictator.
>
> The one real harm WikiLeaks could do to the working class is refuse to
> publish a beneficial leak. I don't think they are likely to do so, but the
> emergence of a few more sites should hedge against that becoming a problem.
>
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 11:19 PM, Mathieu ONeil<[email protected]>wrote:
>
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>>> Does this change the character of being peer-production?
>>
>> Apart from the money/governance angle it is not clear to me how they
>> actually operate - how democratically or openly decisions are taken, apart
>> from the fact that the reason openleaks forked off was because "Schmitt"
>> contested the autocracry of the WL founder - see the Wired-leaked IRC chat
>> logs etc.
>> cheers,
>> Mathieu
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Stefan Meretz<stefan-/[email protected]>
>> Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2011 10:49 pm
>> Subject: Re: [ox-en] WikiLeaks and peer production?
>> To: [email protected]
>>
>>> On 2011-02-08 21:56, Mathieu ONeil wrote:
>>>> (...) raised the question of the deal
>>>> with the newspapers: does it cover expenses, legal fees etc?
>>> No-one
>>>> knows. So while they may be producing transparency externally the
>>>> same cannot be said for their inner operations.
>>>
>>> Concerning WikiLeaks that's true and commonly criticized. We
>>> will see if
>>> OpenLeaks will do better. Is every free software project
>>> transparent in
>>> this regard (serious question, I don't know)?
>>>
>>> Does this change the character of being peer-production?
>>>
>>> Ciao,
>>> Stefan
>>>
>>> --
>>> Start here: www.meretz.de
>>> _________________________________
>>> Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
>>> Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
>>> Contact: [email protected]
>>
>> ****
>> Dr Mathieu O'Neil
>> Adjunct Research Fellow
>> Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
>> College of Arts and Social Science
>> The Australian National University
>> email: mathieu.oneil[at]anu.edu.au
>> web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>> _________________________________
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>> Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
>> Contact: [email protected]
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>
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