One Man Rule

While talking to a friend, about Lewisham Council’s Democracy Review, I came to the conclusion that while I have opposed Executive Mayors because I feel the Labour Party is incapable of holding them i.e. Labour Mayors to account to their manifesto promises, actually the Council can’t do that either; it doesn’t have the tools; Scrutiny can only delay a decision and every decision except planning and licensing is taken by the Mayor. 💩

I need to look into the law and see if this can be changed/improved within the context of a Mayoral system, but as you may know my preference is a return to committee led councils. …

Do what we like!

I can’t believe I didn’t write this up during the Lewisham East by-election. I am looking at Chapter 5 Selections, rights and responsibilities of candidates for elected public office, the rules say,

Chapter 5.I.2

Party units shall act in accordance with guidance that shall be issued by the NEC in the application of these rules. The NEC has the authority to modify these rules and any procedural rules and guidelines as required to meet particular circumstances or to further the stated objectives and principles of these rules. Further the NEC has the power to impose candidates where it deems this is required by the circumstances.

Seems clear, although it conflicts with C1.X Scope. Also the preamble to the rule, states that it is equivalent in authority to the appendices i.e. they are to be read in conjunction with selection procedures set out in the appendices to these rules.

ooOOOoo

So Scope C1.X says they can’t vary selection rules, & C5 says they can, what would a judge say? …

How long does Labour’s candidate panels last?

Some times I wish I hadn’t started this, but I was looking up teh Labour Party’s rules for someone else and came across this gem in Appendix 4 NEC Procedures for the selection of local government Candidates, which as I discuss at length cannot be varied by the NEC, although maybe it can!

Rule Appendix 4.A.iv

The panel remains in existence following an election until a new panel is nominated and endorsed. The panel is therefore available for any by-elections in this period. This later date (iii.g above) is so that LCFs can plan for a period without new endorsements whilst high priority selections are taking place. The panel cannot be closed as such so all nominations must be dealt with at an appropriate time.

This is about the panel list and its existence. It is created in the run up to an authority election and those not selected remain on the panel until the list is dissolved. …

Another look at free software

I read this, “‘Software is meant to be free …” at Hackernoon and found it disappointingly lightweight. It talks of Stallman, thus the four freedoms and the GNU project and mentions Eric Raymond in passing as the man who coined the phrase Open Source rather than the author of the Cathedral & the Bazaar and Homesteading the Noosphere. He doesn’t mention Stallman’s attack on the concept/phrase of Open Source since he considered it a diminishing of the four freedoms. It’s weak on the evolution of copyleft; it doesn’t mention for instance, Laurence Lessig and the Creative Commons. Clary also fails to mention Torvalds, the man most associated with Linux, the prime example of Open Source Software, although the EU Commission discovered that the largest contributor to the open source code base was Sun Microsystems.

It is particularly weak in its view of how and why the proprietary software behemoths adopted Open Source. They did so primarily in areas where they were weak in market share and profitability and where their competitors were the inverse. IBM’s massive investment in Linux, much of it through its OEM agreement with Red Hat was designed to kill Sun MIcrosystem’s Solaris; it is arguable that they succeeded, although both I and Eric Raymond think it’s more complex than that, as provoked by him, I argue here.

Our understanding of the economics and sociology has moved on since then. Anne Barron in her 2013 paper, Free Software Production as Critical Social Practice which I should really re-read looks at both and earlier in the previous decade Simon Phipps articulated new sources of value and new contexts for open source software, both how free software created scarce markets, and that open source governance models equally created and constrained the value of its free product. I was lucky to be able to present his theories once or twice and I reported on one such presentation on this blog 10 years ago.

These papers and theories are somewhat aged certainly when one considers the speed of technology development but its possible that even older theories such as Marx’s Fragment on the Machine and more recent developments in conceiving of immaterial labour, and the enigma of software’s role in the means of production are all part of the questions that need to be answered to understand the economic role and governance of software.

It’s not that software wants to be free … it’s just looking like no matter what theories of price you adhere to, free is the right price.

ooOOOoo

See also Free, the right price for software and maybe Monopoly and prices, both by me on this blog, written in 2009 exploring the micro/meso-economic classical welfare theories as to why software should be free. …

The ground is shifting

This is doing the rounds, “In a hole and still digging: the left and Brexit“, it’s quite long and I summarise it as follows,

The extra Parliamentary Left, unlike in the 70’s is now not strong enough to be relevant; Brexit is a right wing project and the Left cannot sustain the space to make Lexit any different from the right’s project. The long look at the psephology proves that Leave’s ideology is not hegemonic amongst the proletariat/working class and that the Leave vote is not part of the downtrodden masses waiting for the lightening bolt of revolutionary consciousness to strike. Opposition to Brexit is growing, and by sticking with the Lexit position, Lexiters isolate themselves from this growing population. A no deal, or May’s Deal, Brexit will be shit, all who eased its path are going to be blamed including the leadership of the Labour Party if that’s where it is seen to stay.

 …

Appropriation

Are we in a world where the copyright laws are morally/economically based on the Labour Theory of Value and the workers get paid as the product is used while everything else is appropriated and accrues to capital and its owners? I think so, although of course Capital steals/buys the copyright; they win either way. …