Das theoretische Potential (OSP)

First Monday: Open Source — 3 October 2005

First Monday: Cyberinfrastructure June 2007

First Monday: Public Knowledge Project July 2007

Ökonux, Texte

Brad Frederiksen: The Massive Minority

Felix Stalder, Jesse Hirsch: Open Source Intelligence

"The condensed outcome of these experiences is a realization that a sustainable, open and collaborative practice is difficult to achieve and that new specialized approaches must be developed in order to sustain the fine balance between openness and a healthy signal/noise ratio."

"Hierarchies are fluid and merit-based, however and whatever merit means to the peers. This also makes it difficult for established members to continue to hold onto their positions when they stop making valuable contributions. In volunteer organizations, this is often a major problem, as early contributors sometimes try to base their influence on old contributions, rather than letting the organizations change and develop."

"None of these principles were "invented" by the Open Source Software movement. However, they were updated to work on the Internet and fused into a coherent whole in which each principle reinforces the other in a positive manner. The conservative tendencies of peer review are counter-balanced with relatively open access to the peer group: a major difference from academia, for instance.

"As a distinct practice, Open Source Intelligence is still quite young and faces a few challenges.

"First, there is the issue of scale. Compared to traditional broadcast media, OS-INT projects are still very small (with the exception of slashdot, which has about half a million registered users) [17]. Since scale and exposure significantly affect the social dynamics, growth might not come easily for many projects.

Second, there is an issue of economics. Most OSI-INT projects are pure volunteer projects. Resources are donated. Wikipedia, for example, depends on Bomis Inc. for hardware and bandwidth. NoLogo.org is financed through royalties from book sales. Most OS-INT project have not yet produced any revenue to cover some of the inevitable costs. So far, they have quite successfully relied on donations (from sympathetic individuals, corporations or foundations), but prolonged crisis of the Internet economy does not necessarily make it easier to raise funds, which becomes more important as the projects grow in size and the infrastructure/bandwidth needs increase.

Compared to traditional production and publishing models, OS-INT projects take part to a large degree outside the traditional monetary economy. Contributors, by and large, are not motivated by immediate financial gain. However, not all resources can be secured without money, so new and creative models of financing such projects need to be found."

Henrik Ingo: Open Life. The Philosophy of Open Source

Milton Mueller: Info-Communism?

"Here we are forced to acknowledge the appropriation of communist symbols, including symbolism drawn from Marxist–Leninist and even Maoist movements of the past, sometimes ironically and sometimes not, by certain elements of the information left. Why does this happen? Because communism affords them a readily available repertoire of symbols and historical connotations. The image is one of a mass movement challenging the powerful and wealthy and overturning the economic status quo. While recognizing that this appropriation of communist symbolism apparently is irresistible to some on the informational left (Hunter’s essay fell for it hook, line and sinker), we must also acknowledge that it is troublesome and actively contested by others. What the people who reject this framing realize, perhaps more clearly than the others, is that frames and labels can become self–fulfilling prophecies. Symbols can re–shape social movements in their own image. A movement that uses images of Che Guevara as a banner is going to attract different constituencies and follow a different path than one that uses other symbols."

"There is little doubt that the moral and political impetus that led Richard Stallman to create the Free Software Foundation was based on concepts very close to anarcho–communism. Based in a university research institute in the 1970s and early 1980s (MIT artificial intelligence labs) Stallman, like many other hackers, became acculturated to an ethic of total sharing of work product and almost complete freedom from organizational hierarchies. In the early 1980s, as the software developed in these research labs became valuable business assets, it began to be protected and enclosed in various ways; e.g., by withholding the source code from publication, binding programmers with non–disclosure agreements, and copyright protection. Stallman was deeply angered and felt excluded and “victimized” by his initial encounters with the propertization of software [6]. He also actively resisted the use of exclusive identities and passwords on computer systems. Significantly, he viewed the refusal to share code not in practical or policy terms but as a moral issue, a violation of the basic ethical command to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Stallman’s rationale, insofar as it is rooted in a sharing ethic, is truly communalist.

But the “communist” label is belied by Stallman’s strategy of institutionalization. The free software movement pioneered a new economic institution, the software licensing concept embodied by the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL is based, ironically, on copyright law. It grants users the right to run, copy, redistribute, study, change, and improve the underlying source code of a program. The license is designed to prevent anyone from acquiring exclusive, proprietary rights to software developed by the F/OSS community; as Stallman puts it, “instead of a means of privatizing software, [the license] becomes a means of keeping software free.” [7] That does not, however, prevent developers from selling copies of the software for profit or from commercializing services associated with it. The economy around that software can presumably remain capitalist, though this is an ambiguity we will explore later in the paper. Also, open source software advocates would later self–consciously pioneer new methods of virtual organization and collaboration, dovetailing with anarcho–syndicalist concepts of a “gift economy” wherein the people who actually produce the product interact with each other directly avoiding managerial hierarchies (Raymond, 1999; Benkler 2006)."

"There is only one difference between Stallman’s definition of free software and the OSI’s definition of open source software. Free software requires reciprocity; that is, those who incorporate open source code into a derivative product must license the product as free software. Open source, on the other hand, does not require reciprocity; point 3 of the open source definition allows it but doesn’t require it. Thus open source licensed code can be incorporated into proprietary software. This seemingly small distinction has great political significance. Although both approaches are contractually based, the GPL is designed to be a one–way valve into the commons. Its intention is to cumulatively push all software into it through viral replication. Open source, on the other hand, lets users pick the license that suits them best in a more utilitarian calculation, and is agnostic about the overall economic direction of the software industry. In effect, it envisions a mixed economy, a co–existence of proprietary and open information."

"Stallman refers repeatedly to the “the moral unacceptability of non–free software.” What is it that makes owned software morally unacceptable? The argument takes two distinct forms.

One is a simple appeal to the moral obligation to cooperate and share. Software ownership is wrong because we have a duty to let others use resources we have. “If your friend asks to make a copy [of software],” Stallman claims, “it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright.” This is a deontological claim; i.e., it holds that moral worth is an intrinsic feature of certain actions, and makes no reference to the practical consequences that the actions happen to have.

A second, clearly distinguishable aspect of the moral case for free software is that attempts to institutionalize proprietary information leads to unacceptable restrictions on the freedoms of end users. It is a “system of subjugation” and cannot be enforced without eliminating the transparency of source code and thereby impairing users’ ability to modify, copy and redistribute the program. It extends the owner’s control beyond the first sale into a set of ongoing restrictions on human action. This is a consequentialist ethical claim. It focuses more on the concrete effects of instituting proprietary software on end users and society.

Of these two prongs of thinking, I believe that the first is invalid and leads to the dead end of communism. The second is a far more important and substantive claim, but has not, I think, been consistently thought out. The clash between principled and pragmatist advocacy reflects this imperfection in the ideology. It reveals a widespread lack of clarity regarding which of these two claims is the basis for advocacy."

"The Internet seems to be based on an unusually successful combination of private market and commons. TCP/IP internetworking is based on global, open and non–proprietary standards. The networking protocols can be freely adopted by anyone. They are published openly and can be used by anyone without paying a fee. At the same time, the Internet is a decentralized network of networks, the constituent parts of which are privately owned and administered by autonomous organizations: the private networks of households, small businesses, large enterprises and non–profit organizations as well as the (usually privately owned) public data networks, both large and small, of Internet service providers and telecommunication companies. This aspect of the Internet leads to privatization and decentralization of network operations and policies. By facilitating interoperability, Internet leads to privatization and decentralization of software applications and information content as well. At the endpoints of the Internet, the free market and privatization rule; at the core standards level, a commons is in place. The end–to–end principle has in the past ensured that commons and market complement each other. The market in applications, content and networking requires neutral coordinating mechanisms that enable interoperation. With end–to–end, the sharing and coordinating mechanisms are deliberately minimized to provide maximum scope for private initiative and innovation. There is a clear separation between the parts of the system that are subject to private initiative and control, and the parts that are subject to global coordination and non–exclusive access. In short, it is the combination of the two, private and common, that works."

Michael Goldhaber: The Value of Openness in an Attention Economy

Giliam de Valk, Brian Martin: Publicly Shared Intelligence

Johan Söderberg Copyleft vs. Copyright

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