hardware and free software

16.IV.1430

Until society figures out a way to manufacture, transport and give away goods from raw materials for free, we cannot have free hardware the way free software has evolved.

Along its supply chain, hardware costs

- raw materials -> components ,
- labor to assemble components and subcomponents and so on,
- long-distance transport from pt of origin to pts of sale,
- whatever else (overhead)

So it seems impossible that there would be free hardware - as happened with software.

Although if there existed an open source community - and there exists to an extent - for hardware similar to the software counterpart, there is still room where it would fit in the supply chain.
Mainly replacing waged labor to assemble the hardware parts.

But this does not eliminate costs. There are transport costs for the free workers / contributors / volunteers to get to the assembly points.

Also because assembly points are centralized, it severely restricts the possibility of a widespread population of free workers - like that which exists in free software space.

By contrast, software is all brains and bandwidth (and hardware, but to much lesser extent).

Thus, I hope that the added value of hardware created by the waged labor that designs and makes it does not enter into the price of hardware to the end user. It does enter into it. And this even though workers are not renumerated for their value-added labor.

But why should I pay for value-added labor on hardware (which is not returned to the laborers) while I get value-added labor in free software for free ?


... not oddly, all this eventually leads to the system of both guilds and the state cushioning the life of labor's value-added products, not in wages, but generalized social and economic services. The existence of the guilds prevents a completely centralized socialist welfare state - as responsibilities are shared between both.

What keeps the guilds on the straight and narrow wrt their responsibilities to their labor force? but what doesn't ?

Historically, it seems guilds have not betrayed workers - they were simply dismantled by state and finance and then later replaced by trade or labor unions (rather emotionally but euphemistically refered to as brotherhoods by Americans). But they are not remotely related to the structure and functioning of the extinct ancient trade or industry guilds.

In the modern age, both the trade unions and industry associations are locked in adversarial relationships and both are corrupt and completely compromised.

The ancient guilds functioned both as industry associations and as workers' entitlements.

The innovation is that in a moneyless society, the equilibria are built around mutual exchange of value. That is the exchange of value-added production in return for the provision of the requisites of some accepted standard of living - removing the man in the middle, money.



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