Marxists would argue that naive is exactly what you were, and Marxists would reference history both to show you why and what you could have done about it. Liberalism and capitalism have always been loving bedfellows.
Not GP, but if I extend the “marxists warned” logic, what could have been done would be to own the means of production. In this case, as with a lot of other Marxist analysis, that means taking a different view of what freedom entails, tying permission to exploit labor to a commitment to serving that labor and sharing its spoils. To some extent later GNU licensing reflects similar thinking.
I think what was naive was building OSS around service, support and consulting. Instead it could have been built around mutual benefit as a governing principle.
>I think what was naive was building OSS around service, support and consulting. Instead it could have been built around mutual benefit as a governing principle.
Free software was built around the principles of mutual benefit. OSS was coined as a "corporate friendly" label, and it is from that culture that the whole service and consulting thing comes. Service, support and consulting is how you make money from it. It wasn't naive at all - it was a cynical co-opting.
(And if you don't see the problem with the maintainers of a piece of software to also charge for support, may I direct your attention to The Shirky Principle [0] - "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution". Software developed under this model will, over time, become byzantine, baroque, and frustrating - because that brings in the consulting cash.)
Your characterization of OSS is correct, but free software was built around individual empowerment and equity of access, which are liberal principles, not mutual benefit which is a leftist principle. Stallman is a civil libertarian and perhaps a democratic socialist, but as far as I know has never identified himself as a Marxist nor does his work lean on class analysis.
Stallman (and others e.g. Lessig) had clear visions of where they wanted to be but were thoroughly stuck in an end-of-history mindset - "we'll do the work to get this small part of society from A to B, and then we'll be at B." Well, no, then someone is going to drag parts back to A, and another is going to drag a few over to C, and after a few steps of this your rhetoric around digital freedom is going to be half fueling the propaganda of the largest, most powerful corporations in American history, and half the weak intellectual justification for a right-wing populist riot.
As a customer visiting any store (not just Walmart), it is rather frustrating to need assistance from an employee but unable to find one until you find a gaggle of them all "hanging out". I have no idea what they are doing. They could be talking about unions, they could be talking about the weather, or they could all have just completed assiting the movement of a heavy item require 4 "teammates". Either way, it is not a good look for the customer.
Having worked retail stores, you really underestimate how little time you have as any individual to get your shit done and also help customers. That gaggle may be them deciding how to make the store look right with only 4 people when normally it’d take 8.
If you want good customer service go somewhere they dont cut corners on staffing while paying the heroes that have to do 3 people’s jobs minimum wage.
Then take that gaggle to the back in a meeting room so that it's not visible to the customers.
>If you want good customer service go somewhere they dont cut corners
Where does this exist? I'm free this weekend. I'll see about taking a visit to this magical fairy land you speak. /s Seriously though, what public facing retail store doesn't cut corners on staffing or any other aspect? I need to expand my list of stores not on the "disgusted with" list
I don’t know why any of those three possibilities qualifies as a “bad look”. They’re working humans with needs, just like anyone else. It’d be like saying it’s a bad look whenever a few programmers are at a computer. What could they be doing?
Why would you even try to compare coders to customer service oriented jobs? No computer coding company has ever had a slogan similar to "We're here to help". Every big box retailer promotes their employees being there to assist their customers. That's why the all wear the same color blue shirts, orange aprons, etc so that they are easily identifiable to customers looking for assistance. That's their job, at least part of the job.
Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vRbnPA3fd5U