In the mid-1980s, Richard Stallman invented something called Free Software, now commonly also referred to as Open Source Software (Coleman, 2009, p.423). Free or Open Source software (F/OSS) can be defined as software which may be shared and modified collaboratively through the reworking of copyright law (Kelty, 2008, p.2). Unlike proprietary software, anyone may access this software which is free both in the sense of constraints and monetary charge (Kelty, p.1). However, they must comply with the Open Source Definition, which highlights matters such as the importance of upholding the integrity of the author’s source code and not allowing any forms of discrimination.
A F/OSS community emerged who are dedicated to challenging existing forms of access to software and consider code as ‘speech’ likening restrictions on the distribution of source code to restrictions placed on speech (Coleman, p.437). Free software is free speech.
Through the practice of establishing new meanings for the distribution of software, programmers become legal experts who are capable of negotiating the complex world of copyright law so as to avoid any legal pitfalls that might be thrown their way (Coleman, p. 425).
The Debian Project, for example, is a community of programmers who have created a free operating system. In the process, they have established fundamental guidelines for F/OSS, as well as codes of conduct and a social contract. These guidelines not only enable Debian developers to manage the tricky legal dynamics involved in F/OSS, but simultaneously represent the importance of upholding the ethos of the entire F/OSS community.
Another F/OSS platform is called Ubuntu. According to their website, the name derives from a traditional African value meaning ‘humanity to others’ or ‘I am what I am because we all are’. The programmers’ decision to call their software Ubuntu is a way of representing what the F/OSS community stands for, and stands against.
F/OSS is about a ‘reorientation of knowledge and power in contemporary society’: who has the power to access knowledge, contribute to it, and change it (Kelty, p.2). Specifically, the practice of modifiability – at the heart of these F/OSS communities – challenges and unsettles long-standing practices regarding the forms of power that have control over information, who has the authority to publish certain projects, and who gets to decide when these projects can be considered finished, if ever (Kelty, pp.11-12). Furthermore, F/OSS communities are challenging ideas about the relationship between online communities and digital infrastructures by actively reworking the very infrastructure that allowed them to exist in the first place (Kelty, p.7).
Interestingly, in 2016, the Bulgarian government passed a new law requiring government software to be open source. Decisions like this raise important questions about transparency in the digital aspects of government practice, the potential for F/OSS to combat some of the issues that surround them, and what we might gain from advocating this approach.
Ultimately, these new forms of online collaborative practice forcefully disrupt our existing understandings of how knowledge is shared and created, and who has the power to control it.
References
Coleman, G. (2009). Code Is Speech: Legal Tinkering, Expertise, and Protest among Free and Open Source Software Developers. Cultural Anthropology, 24(3), pp.420-454.
Kelty, C. (2008). Two bits. Durham: Duke University Press.
Linked Resources
Debian. (2019). Available at: https://www.debian.org/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
Open Source Initiative. (2019). The Open Source Definition. Available at: https://opensource.org/docs/osd [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
Ubuntu. (2019). Available at: https://ubuntu.com/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
Verma, A. (2016). Bulgaria Makes A New Law Requiring All Government Software To Be Open Source. Fossbytes. Available at: https://fossbytes.com/bulgaria-makes-law-requiring-government-software-open-source/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
anthropology of infrastructure 2019 