(Feel free to fork this and do whatever your free will desires)
If culture at large abandoned the concept of proprietary rights, progress would accelerate in technology and the true potential of individuals.
"Free Surface" is an initiative designed to promote a free surface for individuals to realize their true potential. Corporate bureaucracy is becoming more and more totalitarian and socialist in it's very structure.
What is objectivism? It is basically Capitalism's equivalent of Karl Marx. Nobody hears about it because it sort of says that human nature is reality and socialism is denial. I still largely agree with that philosophy. It feels a lot like commone sense to me.
The reality is that I have benefited from open source and I want to share that with others. I need to be honest right now and admit that I am not an altruist, the only book I ever finished as a young man was the "Fountainhead". I loved it, thought about Howard Roark all the time. What I loved was that he only wanted to do what he wanted to do. It was not money, it was human potential.
Eariler, I said a lot about the idea that we lack satisfaction in our jobs. After more conversations, I think what we really lack today are human beings being afforded a good chance to realise their true potential. I think a lot of what goes on in the corporate world today is the exact thing that Roark dispised. Sure at the top their are folks diving deep down into their minds and having confidence to execute. Down at the bottom though, too many people are from day one treated like faceless cattle.
There is a sea of young developers and tech folks out there who have largely abandoned the concept of proprietary rights. They have seen the fruits of a world where individuals awknowkledge that more can happen if you don't hoard root ideas and tie them to a single person. Sadly today the law looks at corporations as people as well. Any true objectivist must be able to see how that defeats the core philosophy. Every idea a person posesses came from something they saw or read, open source let them follow the bread trail. I want to know more about the science of why open source has happened the way it has, and what about it has made it help so much. I have theories.
It's funny, I was really into the idea of objectivism for a long time. It even inspired me to get a tatoo that said "...ideas...", because that is what I took from it. Until I saw how many people who claim to think that way support all of this corporate mess we have today. To me that is just a refusal to awknowledge commone sense.
Perhaps the open source movement could learn a thing or two from objectivism and vice versa. I personally would love the take on this from a person like Alan Greenspan.
The idea is simple. Patents must end. A new economy begins. Very crazy we understand. Just asking people to really think hard about what value those concepts bring to them anymore.
This project is meant to be a chance for anyone outside of this very small industry to take a crack at some of the workflows that developers go through. Devising a plan and direction works very much the same way as building software, or at least it could. It's just that english is the syntax. The tech community has figured out a lot of ways to speed progress. Outsiders can make use of a lot of these methods, and it's not that hard. So far this is just an idea in version control, YOU can learn how to use version control as well. You will never look back!
If you are company that thinks they would like to pinoneer in an area like this, let us know! Does your current business centric software really do what it needs to for your staff?
I love money, it's a guilty thing to admit to today, but I have to be honest. I am also not feeling guilty about admitting it. The thing is I also love lots of other stuff. It's all really my choice. I will continue to use it to get stuff that I want. I will continue to do stuff to get it. It does not matter who gives it to me, the objective philosophy is that human nature will make it all work out. It also implies that you have laws to ensure that is granted to each person no matter what. They can mess it up if they want to, but human nature is to not do that. The thing to keep in mind is that this only a part of our nature. Science shows us that things evolve, if you are objective, you should also use science to your advantage. I will do that right now as I objectivly have the right to do. People just want to be alive and do what what they want as they see fit. We will collect and ditribute in many ways over time. Right now we do the money thing, and it is very popular, looks like it's sticking around for a while. Why should their be laws to stifle the evelution of human progress.
Good question. From an objective perspective I chose to do this to see if I could provoke people.
We could use open source platforms like this to talk about the eco system where people are just
naturally assuming this will work becasue they likey think objectively. I am person who thinks
that it is not crazy to leave everything out in the open and take on whatever chaotic scrutiny
the world throws at it. I will learn how to use that to my advantage because I think objectively.
I will learn how to potition myself so that it is my mind that creates value and have I ideas
about how that is possible. No one has to do it that way either. Let's just talk about it more.
Free surface is the event in physics that causes fluids to level.
It is a metaphor for freedom. It is a human right to try what it is that they want to try.
Think of it like the ocean, and how open that feels. Do we really need to be the one at the top of the mountain?
We want to ensure that an economy exists for future generations where individuals are afforded more freedom to realise their true potential. We want more people to think that it is time to evolve openly and make good use of what we have already created.
Today open source means a lot of things to a small group of passionate people. They would do anything to make the day real where it just no longer made sense to keep ideas closed up behind walls. All of these people know that it amounts to awareness and showing its usefulness. They try very hard to form communities and shape some of the most amazing things you could ever imagine - should you imagine that way.
It would be true to say that open source is a by-product of individuals just trying to make the things they want to make. As an example it shows that individuals need all freedom at all times. If individuals want to protect proprietary rights, so be it. Open source is a potential example of how getting rid of that obsession can make you more productive. What we really need to ask is... should corporations have a say in this? Does it truly benefit the individual for a socialist structure to have an equal right?
The reality is that most of us don't consider these things, we know what the world is from where we sit. The truth is that no one person can know what the critical mass really wants and needs. We need to find a way to make the critical mass tell us what what open source needs to mean. We need to know what people really want from it, what would really make them take action to have it.
If you are a PHD philosopher or a dude who loves watching A&E, your perspective is needed because ultimately it needs to be tested against the hypothesis.
At this point, everything written here is a giant brain dump by a single human being. That will change over time. One things that we notice is that the Science community could play a bigger role in open source. The same thing goes for Economists.
If you are in a lab using any tool or software that cost 8 million dollars for no good reason, that just does not seem right. Github is such a great resource for collaboration, and it is excellent from a design perspective (very important). We would like to welcome scientists and economists to participate in open source with us!
It seems that the best course of action for free surface is to register as a non-profit in Canada. We need legal help to accomplish this so that we can figure out if their is a way to provide taxable benfits to compaines who embrace this methodology.
We also need to prove that this is a human right, whatever "this" is. I am not advocating the name of the right be free surface. I just wanted to name this thing something that sounded cool and the image on wikipedia looks very inspiring.
The word satisfaction gets used quite a lot right now in this document and a rough guess around how that all ties together. We need psychologists to help us understand what really is the best way for a person to be productive. What are the real important states of mind. Should we find a way for more people to work from home and focus on thier families?
This is all well in good, but it is still just a spec among specs right now. There is no valid case to say that what is written here right now if effective enough to get someone involved. If anyone has any ideas about how to get more participation in this, please make an issue or contact us.
As of right now, it's just a big fat guess, so we are saying ALL. I hear of a lot of presidents of million dollar range companies complaining about how software seems to get more expensive over time and less useful. Companies like Oracle spend more time acquiring new arms than they do perfecting the business software they offer.
I say that we get the scientific answer to that question somehow before we go to far. Or just debate it.
We encourage anyone to make issues on github which relate to any thought, no matter how funny they feel about it. Don't be shy, this is all about conversation recorded in history. Right out in the open.
Start making github issues with what ever ideas your brain can come up with. There is a lot of indivdual bias in this current text. It could also be distilled down quite a bit. One good plan is to fork this repo and send back pull requests. You can also go a bit further and create a markdown file with your idea.
Head over to pullup to see the process of an app forming from nothing in action right now! It's a great way to learn.
Hmmmmmm... that is a very good hypothetical made up question. As mentioned above you could make an issue, but that means that you need a github account. If you just want to email us, you do so at info@freesurface.org.
We would say that anyone can write code, they just need to be fond of logical thought. There is also a way of thinking that is important to get in the habit of before you start trying to write a line of code. It's all based around the concepts of binary and ternary logic. The thing is that you don't need to understand what that means, you just have to do things that form your ability to see problems under that sort of pretence.
We would suggest a wonderful experiment that was created at MIT Media Lab called Scratch. Beware, this is for children so keep it in a non shared state and let the kids have their own community and time to create an unbiased future for us. It is all designed to help kids explore these concepts and turn them into things. It's like digital lego more or less. We always hear of people moving to new countries and learning new languages through children's literature. Same idea!
Shared Scratch projects include the source files to allow other 'kids' to download and extend, and we encourage you to do just this, but be mindful to avoid using profanity when naming objects in case you feel compelled to share back.
Yup, it's called StackStrap. It's for developers in small teams who build projects frequently and need a good way to tie best practices into their workflow. Always looking for anyone at all to try it out and see if the philosophy can hold up at their workplace. Needless to say, contributions are welcome.
Credits should not be looked as something that is required to point the original brain child. It's more of a tool for you to track down the original evolution of the idea or maybe you could say meme. Context helps a lot, and you can learn a lot if you follow how a tool found it's way to it's current state.
The idea for this approach to the project was inspired by pullup. It's just a baby, so jump on board and get your ideas in. Tracing back a little more, that idea was rooted from a cool Node.js boilerplate called Hackathon Starter. It's a great way to get a bunch of hackers running at the same time to get their ideas out all at once. Currenlty at Free Surface we are really into projects that help everyone get off their feet with code and in the right direction. So thanks to folks who find satisfaction in those things.