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There has always been a lot of reflection about the supposed relationship between free software and politics. A great part of the free software movement’s actors defend an anarchist (or rather libertarian) point of view and consider that the forms of organization and the ways of distribution of work in the community is somehow to be taken as a “proof of concept” or at least as the proof for self-organisation to function. Others reject this very idea, considering it being only a left-wing revolutionary imagination. Most of them point out the liberal structure of the same ways used for distribution and the existence of free software on several markets.
Read for yourself, there are a lot more ideas in those texts…

• A new wave of freedom by V. Sasi Kumar, 2008, Frontline Magazine India,
  Lorsque vous démarrez votre ordinateur vous vous engagez politiquement, [FR], 2008,
  “The new freedom movement , in software, knowledge, publishing and commerce, will change the way we think, do things and interact.”
  
• Anargeek Manifesto, [EN] [FR] [DE] darkveggy
  “I’m an anargeek, because I’m willing to bring together technological creativity and computer know-how with ethical considerations and political practices. While thought provides practice with meaning and direction, practice enhances thought and offers ideas a concrete expression.”
• Coopération et production immatérielle dans le logiciel libre [FR], Laurent Moineau, Athis Papatheoderou, 2000
  Le modèle du logiciel libre bouleverse la conception que l’on pouvait avoir de la coopération et de l’innovation. Force est de constater que l’on se trouve pour la première fois en présence d’une coopération massive, planétaire, hautement valorisable, assurée conjointement par des entreprises, certes, mais surtout par un ensemble de sujets autonomes, à la fois au coeur du système capitaliste, mais aussi en dehors, voire au-delà.
• Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software, Samir Chopra, Scott Dexter, 2007
  “Technological artifacts of the past consisted only of hardware: engines, motors, pumps, levers, switches, gears. To control the hardware was to control the technology. Hardware is expensive to acquire and maintain, so technology was invariably controlled by large economic entities—states, then corporations. Concerns about social control invariably addressed control of technology; Marx’s concerns about the control of the means of production were focused on the hardware that both crystallized and generated capitalist power.
  The 20th century brought a new form of technology, one in which hardware and control are explicitly separated. The means of production no longer inhere solely in hardware; control is transferable, distributable, plastic, and reproducible, all with minimal cost. Control of technology may be democratized, its advantages spread more broadly than ever before. The reactionary response to this promise is an attempt to embrace and coopt this control to advance entrenched social, economic, and political power. It is this reaction that free software resists.”
• Du libre et du gauchisme, [FR], Antoine Pitrou
  “Le malentendu est récurrent, dans les milieux de gauche, sur la nature et la position politique des mouvements du libre (logiciel libre et art libre). Nous tâchons ici de dissiper ce malentendu qui se manifeste par des attentes inconsidérées et, semble-t-il, des déceptions entraînant réactions hostiles et sentiment de trahison.”
• Free software and anarchism - does this compute? talk by S. Gaycken @ 22C3, Berlin, 2005
  “The mode of production in free software development is often being described as anarchical. Despite this attribution seems not initially intended in any fundamental political sense, this sense starts to transfuse the discussions. This invites to a closer look at the reference: what it is, what it’s not and what it could be. And once viewed from general anarchist theory and the anarchist theory of technology, any political relation seems to vanish.”
• From free software to street activism & vice versa: an introduction, darkveggy
  “Contemporary societies have now endorsed computer technology, to the point of turning its use into an attractive social duty. But while some computers power market-economy, other machines remain busy with myriads of software alternatives, counter-initiatives & community offensives. What follows is a quick walk-through some of the cracks in the official computer picture; a surface exploration of the convergence between digital alternatives and political subversives.”
• Interview with Richard Stallman, 1999
  “Free Software is a political action which places the principle of freedom above everything else.”
• Anarchism triumphant: Free Software and the Death Of Copyright [EN], Eben Moglen
  “The spread of the Linux operating system kernel has directed attention at the free software movement. This paper shows why free software, far from being a marginal participant in the commercial software market, is the vital first step in the withering away of the intellectual property system.”
  L’anarchisme triomphant: Le logiciel libre et la mort du copyright [FR], Eben Moglen
  Der Anarchismus triumphiert, [DE] Eben Moglen
  “Die Verbreitung des Linux Betriebssystems hat der gesamten Free-Software-Bewegung zu mehr Aufmerksamkeit verholfen. Dieses Papier zeigt, warum freie Software, die alles andere als ein Schattendasein neben dem kommerziellen Software-Markt führt, der erste nachhaltige Schritt zum Ableben des Schutzsystems geistigen Eigentums ist.”
• Linux, eine gutaussehende Technologie des Neoliberalismus, [DE], Hans-Christian Dany, 1999
  “Über das Ereignis liess sich schwer sprechen, so kam man schnell auf Fragen wie jene, ob Prada-Schuhe, die zum iMac passen, auch zum iBook passen würden. Der Kauf neuer Schuhe würde sich rechnen, wenn man Linux auf dem iBook installiert. Überhaupt täten das jetzt alle. Dabei sei es unglaublich billig, eigentlich umsonst. Wie ginge denn das, fragte einer. Das ginge, weil Linux aus so einer neuen Ökonomie käme, in der die Leute nicht mehr wegen Geld arbeiten würden, sondern aus anderen Gründen. Aber wie die neue Ökonomie genau ginge, wisse er auch nicht.”
• Logiciel libre et éthique du développement de soi, [FR], Entretien avec Stefan Merten, 2002
  “Outre les spécificités de la marchandise informationnelle, indéfiniment reproductible, [Merten] voit l’originalité du logiciel libre dans un processus de production échappant aux contraintes de l’échange et de la rentabilisation et permettant par là aux concepteurs-hackers ce qu’il désigne sous le terme d’« auto-déploiement » de soi. Cette position de pur désir lui paraît contenir les germes d’un auto-dépassement du capitalisme sur la base de ses propres élaborations techniques et sociales, en abolissant la production pour le profit qui en est la base.”
• Multitudes n° 5 : Propriété Intellectuelle, Logiciel Libre, Des subjectivités de l’internet, [FR], revue, 2001
• Multitudes n° 8 : Garantir le revenu, [FR], revue, 2002
• Software Freedom, Robert J. Chassell, 2005
  “Often times, our societies are hurt by the newly gained ease with which computer programs can be duplicated and information stored. We face new and different difficulties than in the past. These difficulties come from bad laws, false beliefs, and obsolete institutions.
  With software freedom, we can overcome these difficulties (leaving us with the more `normal’ problems of an advanced society).”
  
• Software Politics and Indymedia, Benjamin Mako Hill, 2003
• The Limits of Free Software, Asa Winstanley, 2004
  “The success of the free software movement is a potential proof of the validity of anarchist arguments in favour of a self-organising society, free of exploitation, coercion and hierarchy. Furthermore, I believe that it demonstrates that complex technological systems are possible when they have no leader, central government or managers.”
• The political characterisation of Free Software, wikipedia article
• Anarchy and Sourcecode - What does free software have to do with anarchism?, [EN] [DE], Christian Imhorst
  “In a restaurant in New York two men were sitting together having lunch and they considered the next steps of their little revolution. One of them, Eben Moglen, briefly thought about how they must have looked like to the people passing by. `Here we were, these two little bearded anarchists, plotting and planning the next steps. Anybody who overheard our conversation would have thought we were crazy, but I knew: I knew the revolution was right here at this table.’ And the man sitting next to him, Richard Stallman, was the person who was supposed to make it happen.”

More interesting stuff on the utopia of the liberation of labour through computers and on net economics:

• Cybersyn/Cybernetic Synergy a chilean attempt to control a planned economy with computers located in a centralised place in the beginning of the 1970ies (Salvador Allende)
• Cockshott/Cottrell: Towards A New Socialism 1993, ideas for efficient and democratic methods for planning a complex economy
• diverse white papers on commons based peer production by Yochai Benkler
  “In this paper I explain that while free software is highly visible, it is in fact only one example of a much broader social-economic phenomenon. I suggest that we are seeing is the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode “commons-based peer-production,” to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based models of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands.”
• The wealth of networks. How social production transforms markets and freedom by Yochai Benkler, 2006
  “In the past decade and a half, we have begun to see a radical change in the organization of information production. Enabled by technological change, we are beginning to see a series of economic, social, and cultural adaptations that make possible a radical transformation of how we make the information environment we occupy as autonomous individuals, citizens, and members of cultural and social groups. It seems passe today to speak of “the Internet revolution.” In some academic circles, it is positively naıve. But it should not be. The change brought about by the networked information environment is deep. It is structural. It goes to the very foundations of how liberal markets and liberal democracies have coevolved for almost two centuries.”
• diverse texts by William Bowles