Open Source as Social Principle Felix Stalder Novi Sad, July 30,

"Openness" ● openness is not absence of structure, or "free-for-all". ● Karl Popper: Open Society and its Enemies (1945) openness has three aspects: ideological: falsification political: procedure to remove government legal: rule of law, bill of rights, constitution

"Openness" ● open source: – ideological: all code is buggy, no software is perfect – political: system of bug reports, incorporation of improvements independent of origin, "benevolent dictator", forking – legal: license defines rights General Public License (GPL)

"Openness" ● open source: – GPL: right to duplicate right to modify right to duplicate modification obligation pass on these rights – availability of source code

"Openness" ● open source: – movement of programmers: freedom of producers are codified in the GPL – better software, higher rate of innovation – users profit as well: wider availability of high quality software, no artificial scarcity – for users, no difference between open source and freeware – freeware: proprietary software without a price, free as in beer.

"Openness" ● open source vs freeware – difference is central – technically: slow and unstable – socially: program remains opaque

Technology as Politics ● technologies are never just technical, but full of social, political, cultural choices – technology is neither good nor bad nor neutral (Marshall McLuhan) – often hidden – as social life becomes more technologically mediated, these choices matter more – choices are materialized on the level of code – code as architecture (Lawrence Lessig) – technology is society made durable (Bruno Latour)

Technology as Politics ● open source makes choices visible – governments are interested: security – MS allows certain govs to read Windows code ● open source makes choices debatable – minix: read but don't write ● open source puts the choices into the hands of producers and users – anyone can write functionality – anyone can contract functionality

Technology as Politics ● democratization of software development and application ● software as a public good, like air, water etc.

Open Source beyond Software ● success of open source is an example ● open content movement:

Open Source beyond Software ● open access movement: – scientific journals / data

Open Source beyond Software ● open source intelligence

Open Source beyond Software ● common thread: different conception of how to manage IP

Battle over IP ● information can be end product and raw material ● distributors vs. creative producers; control vs access ● attempts to expand control: – legislation (DMCA, EU Copyright Directive) – technology: Digital Restriction Management Systems (DRM) and "trusted computing" – "trusted systems presume that the consumer is dishonest" Mark Stefik

Battle over IP ● attempts to expand access: – technology: Internet, cheap, accessible, global, end-to-end – non-rivalrous exchanges – concept: commons

Commons ● commons: resource used and maintained by a community according to its standards, no individual owners. ● public domain: copyright expired, no ownership ● public information: owned by the state (in theory open to everyone)

Politics of the Commons ● commons depend on context: infrastructure – open source: ● free many-to-many communication ● open standards to ensure compatibility and transferability ● commons content – policies ● protection of free communication channels ● open standards vs closed standards ● development of appropriate licensing schemes, restriction of copyright claim (length and scope)

Economics of the Commons ● mixed economies: – no payment (volunteers) – indirect payment (students, professors) – direct payment (programmers working in companies that use but do not sell software) – donation (of hardware, server space etc.) – commercial and community versions (zope) – community financing (koro5hin, open access journals) – "Posser method" (scientific journals)

Economics of the Commons ● trend towards institutionalization, professionalization of inner core – foundations to handle money (FSF, Apache, Mozilla, Blender, etc) – companies funding projects for strategic purposes (Sun: OpenOffice, AOL: Mozilla) – industry associations to directly employ open source leaders (Torvalds works for Open Source Development Lab) – new (non-profit) ventures with seed money from large foundations

The Culture of the Commons ● there is no information, only transformation (Bruno Latour) ● from original to version ● facilitator vs genius (Torvalds & Stallman) ● measure: improvement ● how to apply to non-functional works?

Society of the Commons ● sustainability ● merciless meritocracy? ● Darwinism: libertarianism ● socialist utopia: oekonux ● service economy ● new role for the public sector

Open Source as Social Principle ● open source is more than software ● organizational, economic, political and conceptual system ● radical alternative to the status quo ● basis of the information society: status of knowledge

Open Source as Social Principle ● two competing vision: intellectual property: – centralized control – distributors keep producers and users apart – information is a scarce, expensive product – innovation is controlled by the center

Open Source as Social Principle ● two competing vision: commons: – decentralized management – distinction between creators and users is fluid – information is nominally free, practically a service – capacity to innovate is distributed ● who will win? – none, but how they lose will be important