< #COMMUNIQUE >
20201022:
"Comrade License"
A reponse to an email by a fellow traveller employed in an academic position, to David/CHT.
X is asking for an installation of a source version of 🔗E2H — a software CHT works to develop and maintain — on their server. It is to be used with a bachelor student group on the topic of "care".
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ello X, how is it going? hope you are well and good to hear from you!!
the shorter version:
i am happy that you considered this excellent software. i both hope and assume you are paid well to do your academic labour, and that the belgian
(***GDP per capita $49,529 (PPP, 2019 est.)[4] // GDP per capita rank 18th (nominal, 2019)***)
... students are well of. in that sense I would feel more comfortable if it was immediately recognized in your mail that you asked for my labour & that labour should never be separated from active subsistence concerns.
(in fact as you know, I believe material equality should go further and be an unconditional commons, so to not require specific product/service transactions. but I am conductive to the liberal compromise.)
the longer version:
it is a bit of a coincidence, but i am literally eating dry bread and drinking water in a rusty 1984 vw van in el jablito, fuerteventura.
at the moment CHT is in the middle of spreading E2h to some collectives (also about CARE! hot industry!!) & trying to find a suitable model for this re-distribution of utility. as you know, i am a hard-headed COMMUNIST, and this is all turning out to be an exciting opportunity for BUREAUCRACY!
i love to support progressive academic work, while meanwhile as you remember, I also believe in the healing powers of maximalist unconditional solidarity. only a few people took my manifesto ( @ https://totalism.org/postmarket ) seriously - you have also been invited - but I am not yet defeated!
I decided to simplify:
if we recognize each other as contributors to a shared struggle,
as we appreciate each other's contributions ...
we need to all afford to eat pizza at about the same regularity.
I recognize via personal trust it is good you are educating and collaborating with these young academians.
I assume you appreciate my work generally.
I know some of the other participants in this arrangement (students, the faculty) eat pizza more regularly than I do - in fact, i have not had pizza in a long time.
so there is a clear Opportunity for some sort of equilibrizing taxation here.
said another way:
the "TECHNOLOGY EXPORT LICENSE" for CHT's E2h software & support package is in process of being written.
→→→ I am very interested if you & the participating young academians would like to put your heart, mind and blank cheques on the table, and join a careful process to help figure out what is right. €€€
Believe me this is a recurring and not a hypothethical situation:
I don't doubt you enthusiastically agree with my lack of interest in sharing my labour with people who would be significantly better off that I am, yet would not take a cooperation as primarily an opportunity for mutual concern. if not as comrades, then at least as insuring the continous functioning of somebody performing development & maintenance work.
of course, in the Free World, there are other solutions that could serve as some sort of a replacement for E2h - branded capitalist solutions, and even "free" solutions under more "permissive" licenses than the Comrade License. however, the conditions that have enabled their production, and that might enable their Durational maintenance in the longest run, must also be put under the attention of our careful concern.
my phone number is +38640554854
cheers,
david@totalism.org
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