Communal and Community Work (How It Relates to Free/Libre Software)
THE basic concept of communal work (e.g. barn raising) is quite universal, but it comes in many names and forms. Culturally it is beneficial to society when there is a sense of belonging and mutual cooperation rather than isolation and complete selfishness.
In Scandinavia there used to be a strong sense of all this. What they call "talkoarbete" (or "talkoot") is an old tradition but parallels Free software (FOSS). Someone explained to us that FOSS is directly relevant to the principles involved and vice versa. "They're about 10 to 20 years too late in getting it on the UNESCO list however. Young don't or refuse to participate and the youngest don't even know the concept."
Yet it is relevant to software freedom due to the overlap in principles. There are explicit ties via the Linux kernel and IRC and original SSH and a few other projects with roots in Finland.
"Nowadays our politicians just use the word "talkoot" when they want the already low-income people to work more for free," a Finn told us today in IRC. "The word has lost its original meaning."
"I didn't know that talkoot is a Finnish thing," he added. "Linus Torvalds is also from Finland [...] I think he has only Finnish citizenship but his family is Swedish-speaking. Computer demos and other demoscene art forms were also added to the cultural heritage list..."
It wasn't entirely Finnish as the Amish and others have (or have had) similar concepts. Talkoarbete was actually a thing in Finland until about a decade ago or maybe a bit longer ago. There are more Amish than ever, but less available farmland each year as it gets paved over and/or bought by speculators. So for survival the Amish are getting forced out of farming.
Anyway, there is overlap with the non-cynical, traditional talcoot/talkoarbete and FOSS in regards to concepts and principles.
If the UNESCO recognition had happened 20 years ago when it was still strong, then there would have been a good chance for continuation. Nowadays adults are nose down in their "phones" getting re-programmed for almost as many hours per day as their kids. No one has time to build or even participate in society. After a generation or two of cultivating non-participants, it will implode or deflate or outright collapse. There are other factors for the collapse.
There's the old saying that "sharing is caring" and we still use it a lot. This site is a non-profit that actually always operated at a loss (in the sense that it runs at the expense of our time and money), but that's an example of communal work. It's serving several purposes. █