<chapter>
<title>FLOSS</title>
<desc>...</desc>
<mails>
<mail>
<nbr>0.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; My Lawyer is an Artist</subject>
<from>Aymeric Mansoux</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:23:23 +0100</date>
<content>Most discussions around the influence of the free software philosophy on
art tend to revolve around the role of the artist in a networked
community and her or his relationship with so-called open source
practices. Investigating why some artists have been quickly attracted to
the philosophy behind the free software model and started to apply its
principles to their creations is key in understanding what a free, or
open source, work of art can or cannot do as a critical tool within
culture. At the same time, avoiding a top down analysis of this
phenomenon, and instead taking a closer look at its root properties,
allows us to break apart the popular illusion of a global community of
artists using or writing free software. This is the reason why a very
important element to consider is the role that plays the license as a
conscious artistic choice.

Choosing a license is the initial step that an artist interested in an
alternative to standard copyright is confronted with and this is why
before discussing the potentiality of a free work of art, we must first
understand the process that leads to this choice. Indeed, such a
decision is often reduced to a mandatory, practical, convenient,
possibly fashionable step in order to attach a "free" or "open" label to
a work of art. It is in fact a crucial stage. By doing so, the author
allows her or his work to interface with a system inside which it can be
freely exchanged, modified and distributed. The freedom of this work is
not to be misunderstood with gratis and free of charge access to the
creation, it means that once such a freedom is granted to a work of art,
anyone is free to redistribute and modify it according to the rules
provided by its license. There is no turning back once this choice is
made public. The licensed work will then have a life of its own, an
autonomy granted by a specific freedom of use, not defined by its
author, but by the license she or he chose. Delegating such rights is
not a light decision to make.  Thus we must ask ourselves why an artist
would agree to bind her or his work to such an important legal document.
After all, works of art can already 'benefit' from existing copyright
laws, so adding another legal layer on top of this might seem
unnecessary bureaucracy, unless the added 'paper work' might in fact
work as a form of statement, possibly a manifesto. In this case we must
ask ourselves what kind of manifesto are we dealing with, what is its
message? What type of works does it generate, what are their purpose and
aesthetic?
The GNU manifesto

In the history of the creation and distribution of manifestos the role
of printing and publishing is often forgotten or given a secondary role.
But, what would have become of the Futurist Manifesto without the
support of the printing press and the newspaper industry in France and
the rest of Europe? Not much, probably. So it is not without irony that
one of the anecdotes often given to illustrate the motivations of
Richard Stallman to write the GNU Manifesto, the founding text behind
the free software movement, is tightly linked to the story of a
defective printer. Indeed, very often, the origin of the document starts
with a story about a problem Richard Stallman and some colleagues of his
faced when Xerox did not give away the driver source code of the printer
they had donated to MIT, preventing the hackers at the lab to modify and
enhance it to fit their specific needs. In this case, this particular
printer model had the tendency to jam and the lack of feedback from the
machine when it was happening made it hard for the users to know what
was going on. [1] Beyond the inability to print, and behind what seems
to be a trivial anecdote, this event still remains one of the best
examples to illustrate the side effects proprietary software can have in
terms of user alienation. The programmers and engineers that were using
the printer could have fixed or found a workaround for the jamming, and
contributed the solution to the company and other users.  But they were
denied the access to the source code of the software. Such a deadlock is
one of the reasons why the GNU manifesto was written. What is unique in
this manifesto, is the idea that software reuse and access should be
enforced, not only because it belongs to a long history of engineering
practice, but also because software has to be free.

Looking at the text itself, we can see that the tone and the writing
style used by Stallman make the GNU Manifesto closer to an art
manifesto, than to yet another programmer's rant or technical guideline.
As a matter of fact, we can read through the document and analyse it
using the specific art manifesto traits that Mary Ann Caws has isolated
based on the study of art manifestos produced during the twentieth
century. [2] For instance Caws explains that "it is a document of an
ideology, crafted to convince and convert." This is correct, the GNU
manifesto starts with a personal story, turns it into a generalisation
including other programmers and eventually involving the reader in the
generalisation and explaining to her or him how to contribute right
away. Caws also characterises the tone of manifestos as a "loud genre",
and it is not making a stretch to see this feature in the all-capital
recursive acronym GNU and the way it is introduced to the reader. It is
the first headline of the manifesto and sets the self-referential tone
for the rest of the text, as well as embodying a permanent finger
pointing to what it will never be: "What's GNU? Gnu's Not Unix!."
Furthermore, she reminds us that the manifesto âdoes not defend the
status quo but states its own agenda in its collective concern", which
is what Stallman does with the use of headlines to announce the GNU
road-map and intentions clearly: "Why I Must Write GNU," "Why GNU Will
Be Compatible with Unix," "How GNU Will Be Available," "Why Many Other
Programmers Want to Help," "How You Can Contribute," "Why All Computer
Users Will Benefit." the GNU Manifesto also instructs its audience on
how to respond to the document with the presence of a final section
"Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU's Goals" that lists and answers
common issues that come to mind when reading it. Last but not least,
manifestos are often written within a metaphorical framework that
borrows its jargon from military lingo and for many the GNU Manifesto is
being perceived and presented as a weapon, essential in the war against
the main players of the proprietary software industry, such as
Microsoft. In fact many hackers saw in the GPL an effective tool in "the
perennial war against Microsoft." [3] Thus, when the copyleft principle,
the mechanism derived from the GNU manifesto, is introduced in the 1997
edition of the Stanford Law Review, it is precisely described as a
"weapon against copyright" [4] and not just a 'workaround' or 'hack'.
&gt;From the manifesto to the license...

This particular concept of freedom, as it is expressed in the manifesto,
is focused on the usage and the users of software. It will eventually
lead to the maintenance by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) of a
definition of free software and the four freedoms that can ensure its
existence. On top of that, the GNU Manifesto is practically implemented
with the GNU General Public License (GPL), that provides the legal
framework to enable its vision of software freedom. It means every work
that is defined by its author as free software, must be distributed with
the GPL. The license itself works as a constant reference to the
manifesto, by the way it is affecting the software and its source code
distribution. Every software distributed with the GPL becomes the
manifestation of GNU, and the license's preamble is nothing else but an
alternative text paraphrasing the GNU Manifesto. This preamble is not a
creative addition to the license, on the contrary the Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) of the FSF even insists that it is an integral part of
the license and cannot be omitted, thus making form and function
coincide.

Even though the GPL was specifically targeting software, it does not
take long for some people to see this as a principle that could be
adapted or used literally in other forms of collaborative works. As
early as 1997, copyleft is mentioned as a valid framework for
collaborative artworks in which artists would pass "each work from one
artist to another." [5] Of course, this is suddenly brought to our
attention not because of the collaboration itself, but because of its
sudden legal validity. Indeed the idea of passing works from one artist
to another and encouraging derivative works is nothing new. For
instance, back in the sixties, mail artists such as Ray Johnson even
used the term "copy-left" in their work, [6] and it was possible on some
occasions to spot the now very popular copyleft icon, an horizontally
mirrored copyright logo, marking a mail art publication. In this context
copy-left was seen as a symbol of "free-from-copyright relationships"
with other artists in a way that was "not bound to ideologies".[7] In a
strange twist, the use of this term is echoing years later, not without
cynicism, in some reproductions of Johnson's works which are now stamped
"Copyright the estate of Ray Johnson."[8]

So why a sudden interest in such practices? Precisely because of the
growing development of intellectual property in the field of cultural
production. At the time, under the 1976 copyright act, the only
recognised artistic collaborative work was the joint work, in which it
is required that all the authors agree that all their contributions are
meant to be merged into one, flattened down, work. This made perfect
sense in the context of the print based copyright doctrine but was
clearly not working for digital environments where the romantic vision
of the author is dissolved in the complex network of branches, copies
and processes inherent to networked collaboration. This situation
provided much headache to lawyers focused on the copyrighting of
digitally born works. One of these works is for instance Bonnie
Mitchell's 1996 âChainArtâ project, in which her students and fellow
artists were invited to modify a digital image and pass it to someone
else using a file server.  In such a project the whole process and its
different iterations are the work itself, not the final image at the end
of the chain. The work exists as a collection of derived, reused and
remixed individual elements that cannot be flattened down into one
single 'joint work' and as a consequence, from a legal perspective,
could neither be protected nor credited properly under the limited
copyright regulations.[9] No surprise then that Heffan picked the Chain
Art project as an example of artistic work that could greatly benefit
from the GPL and the use of copyleft that can encourage "the creation of
collaborative works by strangers".[10]
...and back to the manifesto

Although this conclusion makes perfect sense legally, it clearly
overlooks and diminishes the artistic desire to reflect upon the nature
of information in the age of computer networks. Many artists adopted the
GPL early on, not because of their wish to collaborate with strangers,
but instead to augment their work with a statement derived from the free
software ideology. For instance Mirko Vidovic used the free software
definition to develop the GNU Art project,[11] in which suddenly, the
GPL becomes a political tag, a set of meta data that could be applied to
any work of art. By choosing the GPL as a means of creation and
distribution, artists are aiming at implementing an apparatus similar to
the digital aesthetics that Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) had described
"as a process of copying [â] that offers dominant culture minimal
material for recuperation by recycling the same images, actions, and
sounds into radical discourse".[12] The weapon against copyright becomes
a flagship for the recombining dreams of the digital resistance as
envisioned by CAE. But by directly reusing the GPL, projects such as GNU
Art failed none the less to really break through the position of
Stallman that refuses to take part in judging if whether or not works of
art should be free.

This is why a few lawyers, MÃlanie ClÃment-Fontaine, David Geraud, as
well as artists, Isabelle Vodjdani and Antoine Moreau, felt the need to
make more explicit the artistic context and motivations of a liberated
work of art by creating the Free Art License (FAL), equivalent to the
popular free software GNU public License and articulated specifically
for the creation of free art.  [13] Suddenly, the license becomes an art
manifesto. In the FAL the rules of copyleft are exposed, they stand on
their own and enable the artistic creation, not for the sake of creating
but as a means to produce singular and collective works. What is seen as
freedom is just a very specific definition as envisioned in the GNU
manifesto and that can only exist within the set of rules it represents.
Moved to an artistic context, the rules to define freedom become a
system to make art. In the same way that 'cent mille milliards de
poÃmes' was the 1961 OuLiPo manifestation of creative rules, the free
art license is also a combinative manifesto, one that enables free art.
It is not a simple adaptation of the GPL to the French copyright law, it
is a networked art manifesto that operates within the legal fabric of
culture.

Anyone who respects the rules of the FAL is allowed to play this game.
Just like the ludic aspect in OuLiPo's work, and its probable root from
Queneau's flirt with surrealism, artists who start to consciously use
the GPL and the FAL solely for its 'exquisite' properties might start a
superficial relationship with the creative process. Indeed, Raymond
Queneau, co-founder of the OuLiPo reminded us already that we should not
stop at the process' aesthetics itself because "simply constructing
something well amounts to reducing art to play, the novel to a chess
game, the poem to a puzzle. Neither saying something nor saying
something well is enough, it is necessary that it be worth saying. But
what is worth saying? The answer cannot be avoided: what is useful."[14]
In other words and adapted to the FAL, the network aesthetics are not
enough, their existence must be contextualised and positioned to escape
its fate of a convenient technological and legal framework. This is why
if the game aspect is obvious in the collective works that surround the
FAL, we must see beyond the rules that are presented to us to perceive
that such an artistic methodology aims to be an answer to the issue
perceived by Chon in the analysis of the âChainArtâ project. Namely, to
engage with the fluidity of information and try to turn the clichÃd
attitude of artists towards their unique and immutable contributions to
art into a useful game. At the same time the emphasis is put on the
collective nature of production and not community work.

The main issue with the intention of the FAL is that unlike the digital
aesthetics modeled by CAE from LautrÃamont's ideas,[15] the mechanism of
a free art, against the capitalisation of culture and for the free
circulation of ideas within the network can only work by making the
machine responsible for this very same capitalisation legitimate. While
the mail art derivatives are happening outside of any obvious legal
regulations, the copyleft art is literally hacking the system to reach a
symbiosis and establish a kingdom within the kingdom. As a consequence
these political works are very different from the artistic politics
developed after the Russian revolution and World War I. Here, the artist
is not an agent of the revolution but the vector of an 'arevolution'. A
copyleft art is in the end not so much a critical weapon but instead a
cornucopia that operates recursively and only within the frame of its
license. Artists that are engaging with it, thus turning the license in
a shared manifesto, cannot materialise an anti-culture, a counter
culture, nor a subculture, they must create their own from scratch.
Instead of seeking opposition and destruction of an enemy, they aim at
founding and building.
Conclusion

If we look at 1897 MallarmÃ's 'Un coup de dÃs jamais n'abolira le
hasard', it is possible to only see it as an interesting visual design
experiment in poetry. This approach misses the reason why this work
exists in the first place. By turning art into the gathering and
composing, even painting of both time and space within a text, it
reached the apotheosis of parnassianism and symbolism upon which
modernism broke through.[16] A similar issue of complex lineage and
contextual information surrounds a document such as the FAL and leads to
concurrent 'raisons d'Ãtre.' Indeed, the FAL is not just an 'excercice
de style,' it is the embodiment of several elements that are announcing
important changes in artistic practices: a call to turn legal rules into
a constrained art system, a reflection on the nature of collaboration
and authorship in the networked economy, a living archeology of the
creative process by bringing traceability and transparency, and
ultimately, the mark of an age of copyright and bureaucratic apotheosis
that is pushing artists to develop their practice within the
administrative structure of society and embed it in their creative
process.

Unfortunately, and this is one of the reasons there is so much confusion
and misunderstanding about the use of such licenses by artists and
theoreticians, is that, with such a manifesto where form meets function,
once the license is used, it triggers a process of rationalisation that
leads to a fragmentation of the original ideology and intention into
different, possibly contradictory, elements:

    * A toolkit for artists to hack their practice and free themselves
    from consumerist workflows.

    * A political statement against the transformation of the digital
culture into what CAE calls the "reproduction and distribution network
for the ideology of capital".

    * A legal and technical framework to interface with the current
system and support existing copyright law practices.

    * A lifestyle, and sometimes fashion statement.

In practice it is possible for an artist to only see one of these facets
and either ignore or not be aware of the others, making the license as
manifesto multidimensional, open to different interpretations, not
unlike the medium it was drafted in: the law.

---

[1] Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for
Free Software, ed. Sam Williams (Sebastopol: O'Reilly and Associates,
Inc., 2002).

[2] Mary Ann Caws, Manifesto: A Century of Isms (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2000).

[3] Ibid. 1, p. 13.

[4] Ira V. Heffan, "Copyleft: Licensing Collaborative Works in the
Digital Age," in Stanford Law Review, Vol. 49, No. 6 (Jul., 1997), pp.
1487-1521.

[5] Ibid.

[6] "From Mail Art to Net.art (studies in tactical media #3)", McKenzie
Wark, email on the nettime mailing list,
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0210/msg00040.html.

[7] "RYOSUKE COHEN MAIL ART - ENGLISH", accessed May 13, 2011,
http://www.h5.dion.ne.jp/~cohen/info/ryosukec.htm.

[8] Ibid. 6.

[9] Margaret Chon, "New Wine Bursting from Old Bottles: Collaborative
Internet Art, Joint Works, and Entrepreneurship," in Oregon Law Review,
Spring 1996.

[10] Ibid. 4.

[11] "GNUArt", accessed May 13, 2011, http://gnuart.org.

[12] Critical Art Ensemble, "Recombinant Theatre and Digital
Resistance," in TDR (1988-), Vol. 44, No. 4 (Winter, 2000), pp. 151-166.

[13] "Free Art License 1.3," accessed April 19, 2011,
http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en.

[14] Constantin Toloudis, "The Impulse for the Ludic in the Poetics of
Raymond Queneau," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 35, No. 2
(Summer, 1989), pp.  147-160.

[15] Ibid. 12.

[16] Jacqueline Levaillant, "Les avatars d'un culte: l'image de MallarmÃ
pour le groupe initial de la Nouvelle Revue FranÃaise," in Revue
d'Histoire littÃraire de la France, 99e AnnÃe, No. 5 (Sept. -Oct.,
1999), pp.  1047-1061.

a.
--
http://su.kuri.mu</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>0.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; My Lawyer is an Artist</subject>
<from>Message not available</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:38:05 +0100</date>
<content>Keith Sanborn said :

&gt; Very interesting to consider Mallarmé and OuLiPo in this context. 
&gt; 
&gt; So is this endgame a condition of history or are there ways out?
&gt; Beyond the mutually exclusive strategies you enumerate? Do you have
&gt; one to propose? Or must we make our own inferences from the
&gt; interstices between the elements of your text?

The only thing that I'd like to propose is an encouragement to artists
interested in the topic to keep in mind that free culture is a hub where
many agendas and interests will collide and overlap regardless of their
personal intention and the one of the license creator. Knowing that
might be a beginning of a strategy.

That said, it is worth mentioning the existence of projects that attempt
to break down the "multidimensional" nature of some free cultural or
open content licenses. Some of which will be familiar to this list's
members: the Peer Production License, the Open Art License, the
exception GPL aka ethical GPL, personal "forks" of the Free Art License,
etc.

In each case, the recipe is the same: isolate an issue that is not
compatible with a mode of production, a creation process, a belief or
philosophy and then forbid/manipulate it as a condition hard coded in
the license. 

Such licenses are more than an artistic statement, in the sense of a
purely artistic phantasy, they also aim at founding and building a body
of cultural expressions. But none of them are a way out, instead it is a
way in, a further nesting into some strange legal matryoshka, building
on top of the original copyleft nest within copyright.

Best,
a.
--
http://su.kuri.mu</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>0.4</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; My Lawyer is an Artist</subject>
<from>Heiko Recktenwald</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:15:43 +0100</date>
<content>Hi

Am 11.11.2011 14:23, schrieb Aymeric Mansoux:

&gt; It is in fact a crucial stage. By doing so, the author allows her or
&gt; his work to interface with a system inside which it can be freely
&gt; exchanged, modified and distributed. The freedom of this work is not
&gt; to be misunderstood with gratis and free of charge access to the
&gt; creation, it means that once such a freedom is granted to a work of
&gt; art, anyone is free to redistribute and modify it according to the
&gt; rules provided by its license. There is no turning back once this
&gt; choice is made public.

This is IMHO pure nonsense. IMHO nothing can stop a pruducer from
changing his mind for the future. Why should it be the way you
imagine? What should be the reason for such a limitation ("no turning
back") of his freedom? Can you show me, sorry, ONE case where a court
has decided in your way?
This artist is a lawyer,
very best,
H.
&gt; The licensed work will then have a life of its own, an autonomy
&gt; granted by a specific freedom of use, not defined by its author, but
&gt; by the license she or he chose.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>0.5</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; My Lawyer is an Artist</subject>
<from>David Griffiths</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:07:40 +0200</date>
<content>Heiko Recktenwald wrote:

&gt; Hi
&gt; 
&gt; Am 11.11.2011 14:23, schrieb Aymeric Mansoux:
&gt; 
&gt;&gt; It is in fact a crucial stage. By doing so, the author allows her or
&gt;&gt; his work to interface with a system inside which it can be freely
&gt;&gt; exchanged, modified and distributed. The freedom of this work is not
&gt;&gt; to be misunderstood with gratis and free of charge access to the
&gt;&gt; creation, it means that once such a freedom is granted to a work of
&gt;&gt; art, anyone is free to redistribute and modify it according to the
&gt;&gt; rules provided by its license. There is no turning back once this
&gt;&gt; choice is made public.
&gt; 
&gt; This is IMHO pure nonsense. IMHO nothing can stop a pruducer from
&gt; changing his mind for the future. Why should it be the way you
&gt; imagine? What should be the reason for such a limitation ("no turning
&gt; back") of his freedom? Can you show me, sorry, ONE case where a court
&gt; has decided in your way?

With a licence such as the GPL my understanding was that the "no-turning
back point" happens whenever someone else contributes or forks the work
- from this point on agreement has to be reached from all authors before
the licence can be changed - in practice this is not generally possible.

In terms of software, the freedom considered important by the GPL is
that of the users of the work, not the developers (i.e. it should remain
free/open for the users benefit).

cheers,

dave</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>0.6</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; My Lawyer is an Artist</subject>
<from>Rob Myers</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:01:26 +0000</date>
<content>On 15/11/11 10:15, Heiko Recktenwald wrote:

> IMHO nothing can stop a pruducer from
> changing his mind for the future.

They cannot however prevent the people who have received copies of their
work under a licence offering that work to other people under the same
licence.

So yes the artist can stop offering the work under that licence, but
they'll have a hard time suppressing it.

- Rob.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>0.7</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; My Lawyer is an Artist</subject>
<from>Heiko Recktenwald</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:03:10 +0100</date>
<content>Am 15.11.2011 20:01, schrieb Rob Myers:

&gt; On 15/11/11 10:15, Heiko Recktenwald wrote:
&gt;
&gt;&gt; IMHO nothing can stop a pruducer from changing his mind for the future.
&gt;
&gt; They cannot however prevent the people who have received copies of their
&gt; work under a licence offering that work to other people under the same
&gt; licence.

This is what I am asking myself. I dont think the GPL produces any
obligation, it is just the actual consent of the author that matters and
may change.

IMHO,

best, H.

&lt;...&gt;</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>0.9</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; My Lawyer is an Artist</subject>
<from>Message not available</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Thu, 17 Nov 2011 02:24:35 +0100</date>
<content>Dear Florian,

Am 16.11.2011 19:07, schrieb Florian Cramer:

&gt;&gt;&gt; It is in fact a crucial stage. By doing so, the author allows her or
&gt;&gt;&gt; his work to interface with a system inside which it can be freely
&gt;&gt;&gt; exchanged, modified and distributed. The freedom of this work is not
&gt;&gt;&gt; to be misunderstood with gratis and free of charge access to the
&gt;&gt;&gt; creation, it means that once such a freedom is granted to a work of
&gt;&gt;&gt; art, anyone is free to redistribute and modify it according to the
&gt;&gt;&gt; rules provided by its license. There is no turning back once this
&gt;&gt;&gt; choice is made public.
&gt;&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; This is IMHO pure nonsense. IMHO nothing can stop a pruducer from
&gt;&gt; changing his mind for the future. Why should it be the way you
&gt;&gt; imagine? What should be the reason for such a limitation ("no turning
&gt;&gt; back") of his freedom? Can you show me, sorry, ONE case where a court
&gt;&gt; has decided in your way?
&gt;&gt;
&gt; A producer/copyright owner can change their mind about the license of
&gt; a work in the future, but cannot retroactively change a license
&gt; granted in the past if it was an indefinite license. 

This is a beautifull idea but is it true?

What is "a licence"?

Is it a thing that you get?  No, it is a set of rules on what you can do
with something else, some code or whatever.

And all rules have to be interpreted. Transfers of the code accordiing
to the words of the licence have to be valid.

I would make a difference between the relation between creator A and
user B and the relation between user B and C.

Even if creator A would OWE something to user B, he would owe nothing to
user C.

But I doubt that there is any DUTY of creator A against anybody in those
licences in any legal sense and think that there is nothing  but a poem
and actual consent on creator A, that can change.

Best, H.

&lt;...&gt;</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>0.11</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; My Lawyer is an Artist</subject>
<from>Rob Myers</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Sun, 20 Nov 2011 12:26:24 +0000</date>
<content>
	On 17/11/11 01:24, Heiko Recktenwald wrote:

&gt;&gt; A producer/copyright owner can change their mind about the license
&gt;&gt; of a work in the future, but cannot retroactively change a license
&gt;&gt; granted in the past if it was an indefinite license.
&gt;
&gt; This is a beautifull idea but is it true?

Yes.

&gt; What is "a licence"?

A legal grant of permission. In some jurisdictions it is a form of
legal contract.

&gt; Is it a thing that you get? No, it is a set of rules on what you can
&gt; do with something else, some code or whatever.

Which affect whether you get a particular thing or not.

&gt; And all rules have to be interpreted. Transfers of the code
&gt; accordiing to the words of the licence have to be valid.

All legal documents have to be interpreted. The GPL and various
Creative Commons licences have been interpreted and upheld by the
courts.

&gt; I would make a difference between the relation between creator A and
&gt; user B and the relation between user B and C.
&gt;
&gt; Even if creator A would OWE something to user B, he would owe
&gt; nothing to user C.

B owes something to C, though, and B got it from A. A cannot change
B's ability to give A's work to C. What A "owes" C depends on how
Romantically we view A's work. But C will certainly end up with A's
work.

You are right that A and B have different relationships to C: under
copyleft A can relicence adaptations of the work, B can't. But that's
very different from being able to prevent C from receiving the
original work from B.

&gt; But I doubt that there is any DUTY of creator A against anybody in
&gt; those licences in any legal sense and think that there is nothing
&gt; but a poem and actual consent on creator A, that can change.

As I say, the courts have upheld these "poems". A has no power to
prevent C receiving the work from A. We can phrase this as a duty not
to prevent C from receiving the work if we really want to.

- Rob.
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>0.12</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; My Lawyer is an Artist</subject>
<from>Aymeric Mansoux</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:54:26 +0100</date>
<content>Rob Myers said :

&gt; On 17/11/11 01:24, Heiko Recktenwald wrote:
&gt; &gt; I would make a difference between the relation between creator A and
&gt; &gt; user B and the relation between user B and C.
&gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt; Even if creator A would OWE something to user B, he would owe nothing
&gt; &gt; to user C.
&gt; 
&gt; B owes something to C, though, and B got it from A. A cannot change B's
&gt; ability to give A's work to C. What A "owes" C depends on how
&gt; Romantically we view A's work. But C will certainly end up with A's work.
 &lt;...&gt;

Just to add to what Rob and the others have already said, I think there
is also a confusion between copyright, moral rights and the
effectiveness of the latter within copyleft practices. In theory A can
still stop C to keep on making a particular usage of A's work if there
is a way to demonstrate that this particular usage, even though
fully respecting the terms of the license, is damaging for A's honor and
reputation.

That's the simplified general idea. In practice every juridiction has
its own way to define moral rights and by extension its own cases of
what is considered "damaging". To make things worse the very concept of
moral rights does not exist in all juridictions. Overall, whether it is
defined or not, the whole idea is difficult to put in practice, if not
hard to make relevant to a specific context.

In the end, this only concerns very specific situations that will only
change the nature and possibly terminate the license or the contract
between A and C. B's rights will remain unchanged, as well as the ones
from D, E, F, ..., Z because free culture licenses are irrevocable. The
GPLv3 and CC licenses are very explicit in that regard. A good
illustration of the difficulty to deal with moral right issues is by
checking all the mechanisms in CC licenses to make sure A is not wrongly
credited for changes that were not endorsed.

So, as stated previously, once the decision is made, is public and that
the licensed work has been already copied/distributed, there is no
turning back.

a.
--
http://su.kuri.mu</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>1.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Keith Hart</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 04:32:30 -0500</date>
<content>It appears we cant even agree that one major difference between Free
Software and Open Source/Linux is the attitude to money and hence to
capitalism. Jaromil (below) thinks a statement posted on the net by the
politburo settles the issue. But read Florian's 'in it for the money' and
even more Stefan Merten's interview, where he imagines a society 'beyond
labour, money and exchange' (both below).

Jaromil:

&gt;Free software is a matter of freedom, not price; the word "free"
&gt;has to be intended in this way here. Furthermore, referring to the
&gt;wrong assumption by Keith Hart in this thread:
&gt;&gt; The open source movement is split on the issue of exchange and money
&gt;&gt; payment. Those who follow the Free Software Foundation appear to
&gt;&gt; consider that any hint of money and exchange, even of reciprocity,
&gt;&gt; leads directly to unacceptable compromise with capitalism.
&gt;refer to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html to have a clear
&gt;point about the free-speech / free-beer issue.

Florian Cramer:

&gt;The real amount of altruism in Free Software
&gt;development may be debated, but any programmer who's mostly or even only
&gt;in it for the money would be stupid to program anything but proprietary
&gt;software (which, no doubt, is more profitable).

Interview with Stefan Merten, Oekonux, nettime, 7/12/01:

&gt;But whereas Free Software
&gt;emphasizes the freedom Free Software gives the users,
&gt;Open Source does not care about freedom. The Open
&gt;Source Initiative (OSI) was founded exactly for the
&gt;reason to make Free Software compatible with business
&gt;people's thinking, and the word "freedom" has been
&gt;considered harmful for that purpose. 

&gt;I had the idea that Free Software is something very
&gt;special and may have a real potential for a different
&gt;society beyond labor, money, exchange - in short:
&gt;capitalism - in 1998. 

As it happens, I had come across the free speech/free beer distinction
without having to consult the gnu website. It still seems to me that the
freedom of Free Software is largely, but not exclusively tied up with the
normative absence of money. This allows the purists to insist that those
who wish to work across the divide 'do not care about freedom' or are 'only
in it for the money'. And behind that, of course, is a desire to preserve
the mystique of a hacker elite.

Keith Hart</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>1.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Felix Stalder</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 10:22:41 -0500</date>
<content>&gt;As it happens, I had come across the free speech/free beer distinction
&gt;without having to consult the gnu website.

I think the free speech / free beer distinction is really
counterproductive at this point. I understand its historical value in
rallying US hackers in the context of a culture that fetishes "individual
freedom" to a degree that it's something that one has no longer to explain
or argue for. Free speech = good, in all circumstances. I'm not arguing
against free speech, what I'm arguing against is the idea that free speech
offers a good metaphor to understand the value of free software / open
source.

Lessig, in his new book The Future of Ideas, offers a much better
definition for what "free" in this context means. He writes, "a resource
is 'free' if (1) one can use it without permission of anyone else; or (2)
the permission one needs is granted neutrally" (p.12). Our roads, for
example, are free in Lessig's sense. This is the case even if a toll
charge is levied because the charge is imposed neutrally. Everyone pays
the same price independent of the purpose of driving on the road. A road
would no longer be free if, say, Coke had sponsored its construction and
therefore could prohibit Pepsi trucks from using it.

In this definition, there is no difference in the freedom created by open
source or free software.
&gt;It still seems to me that the
&gt;freedom of Free Software is largely, but not exclusively tied up with the
&gt;normative absence of money. This allows the purists to insist that those
&gt;who wish to work across the divide 'do not care about freedom' or are 'only
&gt;in it for the money'. And behind that, of course, is a desire to preserve
&gt;the mystique of a hacker elite.

I agree with Keith, the absence of money per se is not a virtue. Insisting
on the evils of money in all contexts, is the simple inversion of the
capitalist logic which says making money per se is good.  The
transformation of resources and their impact is what really matters. And
so far, I haven't seen anyone who could show the open source approach
transfers time and money (or donated hardware if you prefer) into worse
code or less code than the FSF approach.

Felix


--------------------++-----
Les faits sont faits.
http://felix.openflows.org</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>1.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:31:43 +0100</date>
<content>Am Wed, 19.Dec.2001 um 10:22:41 -0500 schrieb Felix Stalder:

&gt; capitalist logic which says making money per se is good.  The
&gt; transformation of resources and their impact is what really matters. And
&gt; so far, I haven't seen anyone who could show the open source approach
&gt; transfers time and money (or donated hardware if you prefer) into worse
&gt; code or less code than the FSF approach.

By all probability not, because Free Software and Open Source are
technically the same - the "Open Source Definition" is almost identical to
the "Debian Free Software Guidelines" [and was drafted by the very same
author, Bruce Perens]. The both terms don't even describe differences in
development methodology. They are diverge in philosophical and political
terms: "Open Source" is, according to those who launched the term, about
technically better software ("software that sucks less"), "Free Software"
is about old-hacker-school freedom of information. -

It's quite ironical that other net cultures - such as this one here - has
gotten it the other way round.

Felix, one may of course say that the "Free Software" notion of freedom is
naive, but on the other hand the GNU-style "Free Software" movement
remains the only one to date that had a consistent agenda and politics
against the proprietarization of code and knowledge. (And many of those
who dismissed the FSF positions as obnoxious hippie fundamentalistm have
changed their mind since DMCA, DCSS and Sklyarov.)

The point is not that, say, "Linux" would stand (as "Open Source") against
"GNU" (as "Free Software"). The term "Open Source" was coined and
disseminated by Eric S. Raymond very late, in 1998, as a rebranding for
code that preceded the term for ears or even decades (including GNU,
Linux, BSD, Apache, Perl, sendmail etc.) and which had simply been called
Free Software before.

Florian

-- 
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html
GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>1.3</nbr>
<subject>RE: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Kermit Snelson</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 22:21:08 -0800</date>
<content>Florian Cramer:

&gt; By all probability not, because Free Software and Open Source are
&gt; technically the same

This is true, and the fact may be demonstrated by examining the two lists of
licenses evaluated by the Open Source Initiative [1] and the Free Software
Foundation [2] respectively.  Of the dozens of software licenses that may be
clearly identified as being on both lists, only the Apple Public Source
License is considered "open source" by the OSI but "Non-Free" by the FSF.
That one exception may, moreover, be due more to political than technical
reasons.  The FSF accepts the rest as "free software" licenses, although it
nonetheless deprecates many of these as "GPL-Incompatible."

Keith Hart:

&gt; It appears we cant even agree that one major difference between Free
&gt; Software and Open Source/Linux is the attitude to money and hence to
&gt; capitalism.

The two camps have indeed taken very different rhetorical paths to what are
demonstrably identical conclusions.  I am less optimistic than Felix, who
interprets this as evidence of a great movement that is capable of absorbing
"very different, even contradictory ideas."  I see it the other way around,
namely as a single idea that has been absorbing different movements.

There's no other explanation, I think, for the fact that we're hearing so
much group singing lately between left-leaning communitarians and the
libertarian right, and not only on the finer points of software license
agreements.  Keith's recent proposal in this thread to vacate the legal
monopoly of central banks on the issue of legal tender certainly has the
potential to throw yet another log on this cozy campfire.

Kermit Snelson

Notes:
[1] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html
[2] http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>1.4</nbr>
<subject>RE: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Heiko Recktenwald</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Thu, 20 Dec 2001 17:15:55 +0100 (CET)</date>
<content>&gt; This is true, and the fact may be demonstrated by examining the two lists of
&gt; licenses evaluated by the Open Source Initiative [1] and the Free Software
&gt; Foundation [2] respectively.  Of the dozens of software licenses that may be

You take this blabla much to serious. "Open Source" for example isnt just
an idea, a good idea like BSD licences, GNU etc, but first of all it is a
label. Something for the "No logo" book. This labelism of the different
initiatives has nothing to do with the central concept. Maybe this is why
I dont like Linux. So much chaos and desktop cosmetics. I stay with
FreeBSD. And I like GNU.
H.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Interview with Stefan Merten, Nov 2001</subject>
<from>kadian antal</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 5 Dec 2001 13:44:14 -0800 (PST)</date>
<content>Preview of next issue of subsol, online Dec 15 
http://subsol.c3.hu
//   FREE SOFTWARE &amp;  G P L  SOCIETY   //

&lt;&lt; Interview with Stefan Merten, Oekonux, Germany 
&gt;&gt; by Joanne Richardson, November 2001

&gt;&gt; Q: Oekonux - an abbreviation of "OEKOnomie" and
"liNUX" -  is a German mailing list discussing the
revolutionary possibilities of Free Software. Many
people speak of Free Software and Open Source Software
interchangeably - could you explain how you understand
the differences between them?

The term "Free Software" is older than "Open Source".
"Free Software" is used by the Free Software
Foundation [http://www.fsf.org/] founded by Richard
Stallman in 1985. The term "Open Source" has been
developed by Eric S. Raymond and others, who, in 1998,
founded the Open Source Initiative
[http://www.opensource.org/]. It's not so much a
question of definition as of the philosophy behind the
two parts of the movement - the differences between
the definition of Open Source Software and Free
Software are relatively few. But whereas Free Software
emphasizes the freedom Free Software gives the users,
Open Source does not care about freedom. The Open
Source Initiative (OSI) was founded exactly for the
reason to make Free Software compatible with business
people's thinking, and the word "freedom" has been
considered harmful for that purpose. 

&gt;&gt; Q: Free software means the freedom to run, copy,
distribute, study, change and improve the software,
and these freedoms are protected by the GNU General
Public License. The definition presupposes open
sources as the necessary condition for studying how
the software works and for making changes, but it also
implies more. The definition of Open Source is quite
close: it means the ability to read, redistribute, and
modify the source code - but because this is a better,
faster way to improve software. Openess = speed = more
profit.  The Open Source Initiative proclaims quite
proudly that it exists in order to persuade the
"commercial world" of the superiority of open sources
on "the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that
motivated Netscape." But recently, it is the term
"Open Source" that has gained popularity  and by
analogy everything has become "Open"--open source
society, open source money, open source schooling (to
echo some of the titles of panels of the last Wizards
of OS conference in Berlin.)

Indeed the Open Source Initiative has been extremely
successful in pushing the freedom-subtracted term into
people's heads. Today people from the Free Software
Foundation always feel the need to emphasize that it's
the freedom that is important - more important than
the efficiency of production, which is the primary aim
behind open source. Of course open sources are a
precondition for most of this freedom, but open
sources are not the core idea of Free Software and so
Open Source is at least a misnomer. 

&gt;&gt; Q: How do you mean it's a "misnomer"?  The two
movements exist and the names correspond to the
different ideas behind them. And "Open Source" is the
name the people from this initiative chose for
themselves, and seems quite an accurate
characterization of their focus. 

Free Software and Open Source Software are not two
movements, but a single movement with two factions,
and as far as I can see the distinction plays a major
role mostly in the more ideological discussions
between members of the two factions. They are
collaborating on projects, and sometimes unite, for
instance, when it is a question of defending against
the attacks of Micro$oft
[http://perens.com/Articles/StandTogether.html]. 

And, no, "Open Source" is not an accurate
characterization of this faction, since their focus
has been making Free Software compatible with business
people's thinking. A more correct name would have been
"Free Software for Business" - or something like that.

&gt;&gt; Q: What seems misleading to me is that the leftist
intelligentsia has begun to use "Open Source" as a
cause to promote without realizing the pro-capitalist
connotations behind the term.

Today the widespread inflation of the term "Open
Source" has a deep negative impact. Often the core
idea behind Free Software - establishing the freedom
of the user - is not known to people who are only
talking of Open Source - be it leftist intelligentsia
or other people. I think this is a pity and would
recommend using only the term Free Software because
this is the correct term for the phenomenon. You don't
call "green" "red" if "green" is the right term - do
you? After all, even "Open Source" software would not
be successful if the practical aspect of freedom was
not inherent in its production and use. Interestingly,
in an article entitled "Its Time to Talk about Free
Software Again," one of the founders of the Open
Source Initiative also considers the current
development as wrong.
[http://www.perens.com/perens_com/Articles/ItsTimeToTalkAboutFreeSoftwareAgain.html]

&gt;&gt; Q: The idea behind Oekonux began, in kernel form at
the first Wizards of OS conference in Berlin in 1999.
How did the motivation to begin Oekonux develop from
this context? 

I had the idea that Free Software is something very
special and may have a real potential for a different
society beyond labor, money, exchange - in short:
capitalism - in 1998. In September 1998, I tried to
make that a topic on the Krisis mailing list. However,
next to nobody was interested. In July 1999, I
attended the first "Wizard of Open Source"
[http://www.mikro.org/Events/OS] conference organized
by mikro in Berlin, and was especially interested in
the topic "New economy?". However, in the context of
the idea I mentioned above - the potential to
transform society -  I found the ideas presented there
not very interesting. After the talks I took the
opportunity to organize a spontaneous BOF (Birds Of a
Feather) session and luckily it worked well. So we sat
there with about 20 people and discussed the ideas
presented in the talks. At the end I asked all the
people to give me their e-mail address.

After the WOS conference, mikro created a mailing list
for us - and that was the birth of the Oekonux mailing
list which is the core of the project. In December
1999 I created the web site [www.oekonux.de]. Its main
purpose is to archive the mailing list. Texts and
other material created in the context of the project
is presented there as well as links to web sites and
pages relevant to our discussion in some way. There is
also an English/international part of the project
([www.oekonux.org] archiving [list-en {AT} oekonux.org]),
which, however, is still nearly non-existent. I find
this a pity but unfortunately until now there is
nobody with enough free time and energy to give this
part of the project a real start. So until today all
the material is in German and there are only a few
translations of the texts. In June 2000 I created
another mailing list ([projekt {AT} oekonux.de]) which is
concerned with the organization of the project. 

During April 28-30, 2001 in Dortmund we had the first
Oekonux conference
([http://www.oekonux-konferenz.de/]), which brought
together people from different areas who were
interested in the principles of Free Software and the
possible consequences of these principles on their
particular field. The conference was attended by about
170 persons from a very broad range of ages and
backgrounds, from software developers, to political
theorists and scientists. It was a very exciting
conference with a perfect atmosphere and another
milestone in the way we and - if we're not completely
wrong - the whole world is going. The next conference
is planned to take place in Nov 1-3, 2002.

&gt;&gt; Q: How active and large is the list? 

&gt;From the start we have had very interesting
discussions with some silent periods but usually an
average of 6-8 mails a day. The atmosphere on the list
is very pleasant and flames are nearly unknown.
Fortunately it has not been necessary to moderate the
list, as it regulates itself very well. The
discussions are very contentful and this interview
would not have been possible without them. They cover
a wide number of details but nearly always stay on the
central topic of the list: the possible impacts of
Free Software on society. At the moment we have about
200 subscribers at [liste {AT} oekonux.de], who come from a
wide range of intellectual traditions and areas of
interest. Though of course they all share a common
interest in political thought, there are people from
the Free Software and Hardware areas as well as
engineers of different brands, hard core political
people as well as people with a main interest in
culture and so on. Though the traffic is quite high we
have nearly no unsubscriptions which I think is a
proof for the quality of the list. 

&gt;&gt; Q: In a previous interview with Geert Lovink
[http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/wilma_hiliter/nettime/200104/msg00127.html?line=8]
 you mentioned that the relationship between free
software and Marxism is one of the central topics
debated on the list ... Do you think Marx is still
relevant for an analysis of contemporary society?
Could you give an idea of the scope of this debate on
the list?

First of all we recognize the difference between Marx'
views and the views of the different Marxist currents.
Although different brands of Marxism have distorted
Marx' thought to the point where it has become
unrecognizable, I tend to think that only Marx'
analysis gives us the chance to understand what is
going on today. The decline of the labor society we
are all witnessing in various ways cannot be
understood without that analysis. The Krisis group
[http://www.krisis.org] has offered a contemporary
reading of Marx, claiming that capitalism is in decay
because the basic movement of making money from labor
works less and less. This doesn't mean that capitalism
must end soon, but it won't ever be able to hold its
old promises of wealth for all. A number of people on
the Oekonux mailing list have built upon the Krisis
theories and carried them onto new ground. On the list
among other things we try to interpret Marx in the
context of Free Software. It's very interesting that
much of what Marx said about the final development of
capitalism can be seen in Free Software. In a sense,
we try to re-think Marx from a contemporary
perspective, and interpret current capitalism as
containing a germ form of a new society. 

&gt;&gt; Q: According to many circles, Marx is obsolete - he
was already obsolete in the sixties, when the mass
social upheavals and the so-called new social
movements showed that not class but other forms of
oppressive power had become determining instances and
that the economic base was not the motor that moved
contradictions.

I think that at that time the economic base was not as
mature as it has become today. In the last ten to
twenty years Western societies started to base their
material production and all of society more and more
on information goods. The development of computers as
universal information processors with ever increasing
capacity is shifting the focal point of production
from the material side to the immaterial, information
side. I think that today the development of the means
of production in capitalism has entered a new
historical phase.

The most important thing in this shift in the means of
production is that information has very different
features than matter. First of all, information may be
copied without loss - at least digital information
using computers. Second and equally important, the
most effective way to produce interesting information
is to foster creativity. Free Software combines these
two aspects, resulting in a new form of production.
Obviously Free Software uses the digital copy as a
technical basis. Thus Free Software, like any digital
information, is not a scarce good; contrary to the IPR
(intellectual property rights) people, the Free
Software movement explicitly prevents making Free
Software scarce. So, scarcity, which has always been a
fundamental basis for capitalism, is not present in
Free Software: Existing Free Software is available for
next to zero price.

More importantly, however, the organization of the
production of Free Software differs widely from that
of commodities produced for maximizing profit. For
most Free Software producers there is no other reason
than their own desire to develop that software. So the
development of Free Software is based on the
self-unfolding or self-actualization of the single
individual. This form of non-alienated production
results in better software because the use of the
product is the first and most important aim of the
developer - there simply is no profit which could be
maximized. The self-unfolding of the single person is
present in the process of production, and the
self-unfolding of the many is ensured by the
availability of high quality Free Software.

Another important factor is that capitalism is in deep
crisis.Until the 1970s capitalism promised a better
world to people in the Western countries, to people in
the former Soviet bloc and to the
Third World. It stopped doing it starting in the 1980s
and dismissed it completely in the 1990s. Today the
capitalist leaders are glad if they are able to fix
the biggest leaks in the sinking
ship. The resources used for that repair are
permanently increasing- be it financial operations to
protect Third World states from the inability to pay
their debt, or the kind of military operations we see
in Afghanistan today.

These processes were not mature in the 1960s but they
are today. Maybe today for the first time in history
we are able to overcome capitalism on the bases it has
provided, by transcending it into a new society that
is less harmful than the one we have.

&gt;&gt; Q: How can Free Software "overcome" capitalism from
the bases it has provided? The idea of a dialectical
negation of capitalism (an immanent critique from the
inside that takes over the same presuppositions of the
system it negates) has frequently been discredited.
Both Marx and Lenin's ideas of a dialectical negation
of capitalism preserved the imperative of
productivity, the utility of instrumental technology,
the repressive apparatus of the State, police and
standing army, as a necessary "first stage."  And if
you start from the inside, you will never get anywhere
else . . .  the argument goes. 

Free Software is both inside and outside capitalism.
On the one hand, the social basis for Free Software
clearly would not exist without a flourishing
capitalism. Only a flourishing capitalism can provide
the opportunity to develop something that is not for
exchange. On the other hand, Free Software is outside
of capitalism for the reasons I mentioned above:
absence of scarcity and self-unfolding instead of the
alienation of labor in a command economy. This kind of
relationship between the old and the new system is
typical for germ forms - for instance you can see it
in the early stage of capitalist development, when
feudalism was still strong.

&gt;&gt; Q: In what sense is the production of Free Software
not "alienated"? One of the reasons that labor is
alienated is because the workers sells a living thing
- qualitatively different forms of productive activity
which in principle can't be measured - in exchange for
a general measure, money. As Marx said somewhere, the
worker does not care about the shitty commodities he
is producing, he just does it for this abstract
equivalent, the money he receives as compensation. 

It seems you're talking about the difference between
use value - the use of goods or labor  - and exchange
value - reflected in the price of the commodities that
goods or labor are  transformed into by being sold on
the market. It's true that the use value of goods as
well as labor is qualitatively different. It's also
true that the exchange value of a commodity - be it a
commodity or wage labor - is a common measure, an
abstraction of the qualitative features of a product.
But after all you need a common measure to base an
exchange on. One of the problems of capitalism is that
this abstraction is the central motor of society. The
use of something - which would be the important thing
in a society focusing on living well - is only loosely
bound to that abstraction. That is the basis of the
alienation of work performed for a wage. In Free
Software because the product can be taken with only
marginal cost and, more importantly, is not created
for being exchanged, the exchange value of the product
is zero. Free Software is worthless in the dominant
sense of exchange.

Free Software may be produced for numerous reasons -
but not for exchange. If there is no external
motivation - like making money - there must be
internal motivations for the developers. These
internal motivations, which are individually very
different, are what we call self-unfolding (from the
German term "Selbstentfaltung", similar but not
completly the same as "self-development"). Without
external motivations, there is not much room for
alienation.

Of course self-unfolding is a common phenomenon in
other areas, such as art or hobbies. However, Free
Software surpasses the older forms of self-unfolding
in several ways and this is what makes it interesting
on the level of social change:

* Most products of self-unfolding may be useful for
some persons, but this use is relatively limited. Free
Software, however, delivers goods which are useful for
a large number of persons - virtually everybody with a
computer.

* Most products of self-unfolding are the results of
outmoded forms of production, like craft-work. Free
Software is produced using the most advanced means of
production mankind has available.

* Most products of self-unfolding are the fruits of
the work of one individual. Free Software depends on
collaborative work - it is usually developed by
international teams and with help from the users of
the product.

* All products of self-unfolding I can think of have
been pushed away once the same product becomes
available on the market. By contrast, Free Software
has already started to push away software developed
for maximizing profit in some areas, and currently
there seems to be no general limit to this process.

So contrary to older forms of self-unfolding Free
Software provides a model in which self-unfolding
becomes relevant on a social level. The products of
this sort of self-unfolding can even be interesting
for commercial use.

&gt;&gt; Q: Some theorists have analyzed the internet as a
kind of "gift" economy. In other words, it is not
subject to measure and exchange. Things are freely
produced and freely taken. And unlike exchange, which
has a kind of finality (I pay one dollar I buy one
bottle of Coca Cola, and it's over), the gift, since
it cannot be measured, is a kind of infinite
reciprocity. Gifts are not about calculation of value,
but about building social relationships. Do you see
Free Software as a gift "economy"?

I don't like talking about gifts in Free Software or
in terms of the Internet in general. There is no
reciprocity in Free Software as, similarly, there is
no reciprocity on the Internet. I have used thousands
of web pages and millions of lines of code contained
in Free Software without giving anything back. There
simply is no reciprocity and even better: there is no
need for reciprocity. You simply take what you need
and you provide what you like. It's not by chance,
that this reflects the old demand of "Everybody
according to his/her needs".

Indeed there are several attempts, which are at best
misleading, to understand the Internet and/or Free
Software in terms of capitalist dogmas. The talk about
"gift economies" is one of them, because it focuses on
gifts as some sort of - non-capitalist but nonetheless
- exchange. Even worse is the talk of an "attention
economy" which defines attention as a kind of
currency. The Internet, and especially Free Software
are new phenomena which can't be understood adequately
by using the familiar thought patterns of capitalism.

&gt;&gt; Q: In what sense is "GPL Society" beyond the
familiar thought patterns of capitalism? 

With the term "GPL Society" we named a society based
on the principles of production of Free Software.
These principles are:

* self-unfolding as the main motivation for
production,
* irrelevance of exchange value, so the focus is on
the use value,
* free cooperation between people,
* international teams. 

Though the term has been controversial for some time,
today it is widely accepted in Oekonux. I like the
term particularly *because* you can't associate
anything with it that you already know. GPL Society
describes something new, which we try to discover,
explore and understand in the Oekonux project.
Ironically, part of this process of understanding has
reached the conclusion that a GPL Society would no
longer need General Public License because there won't
be any copyright. So at least at this time maybe it
should be renamed ;-) .

As I tried to explain Free Software is not based on
exchange so neither is a GPL Society. How a GPL
Society may look like concretely can't be determined
fully today. However, at present there are many
developments which already point in that direction.

* One development is the increasing obsolescence of
human labor. The more production is done by machines
the less human labor is needed in the production
process. If freed from the chains of capitalism this
development would mean freedom from more and more
necessities, making room for more processes of
self-unfolding - be it productive processes like Free
Software or non-productive ones like many hobbies. So
contrary to capitalism, in which increasing automation
always destroys the work places for people and thus
their means to live, in a GPL Society maximum
automation would be an important aim of the whole
society.

* In every society based on exchange - which includes
the former Soviet bloc - making money is the dominant
aim. Because a GPL Society would not be based on
exchange, there would be no need for money anymore.
Instead of the abstract goal of maximizing profit, the
human oriented goal of fulfilling the needs of
individuals as well as of mankind as a whole would be
the focus of all activities.

* The increased communication possibilities of the
Internet will become even more important than today.
An ever increasing part of production and development
will take place on the Internet or will be based on
it. The B2B (business to business) concept, which is
about improving the information flow between
businesses producing commodities, shows us that the
integration of production into information has just
started. On the other hand the already visible
phenomenon of people interested in a particular area
finding each other on the Internet will become central
for the development of self-unfolding groups.

* The difference between consumers and producers will
vanish more and more. Already today the user can
configure complex commodities like cars or furniture
to some degree, which makes virtually each product an
individual one, fully customized to the needs of the
consumer. This increasing configurability of products
is a result of the always increasing flexibility of
the production machines. If this is combined with good
software you could initiate the production of highly
customized material goods allowing a maximum of
self-unfolding - from your web browser up to the point
of delivery.

* Machines will become even more flexible. New type of
machines available for some years now (fabbers,
[http://www.ennex.com/fabbers/index.sht]) are already
more universal in some areas than modern industrial
robots - not to mention stupid machines like a punch.
The flexibility of the machines is a result of the
fact that  material production is increasingly based
on information. At the same time the increasing
flexibility of the machines gives the users more room
for creativity and thus for self-unfolding.

* In a GPL society there is no more reason for a
competition beyond the type of competition we see in
sports. Instead various kinds of fruitful cooperation
will take place. You can see that today not only in
Free Software but also (partly) in science and for
instance in cooking recipes: Imagine your daily meal
if cooking recipes would be proprietary and available
only after paying a license fee instead of being the
result of a world-wide cooperation of cooks.

&gt;&gt; Q: This sounds very utopian: Free Software as the
sign of the end of capitalism and the transformation
of the new society? How do you predict this
transformation coming about - spontaneously, as the
economic basis of capitalist production just withers
away? 

I hope these more or less utopian thoughts give an
idea of the notion of a GPL Society as it is currently
discussed within the Oekonux project. And it's not
Free Software in itself which may transform
capitalism. Instead, the principles of the production
of Free Software - which have developed within
capitalism! - provide a more effective way of
production on the one hand and more freedom on the
other. The main question is how is it possible to
translate these principles to other areas. 

I tried to explain how Free Software - as a germ form
of the GPL society - is inside as well as outside of
capitalism. I think Free Software is only the most
visible of the new forms which together have the
potential to lead us into a different society.
Capitalism has developed the means of production to
such an extent that people can use them for something
new.  Of course, the transformation also requires a
political process and although historically the
preconditions now are better than ever before there is
no automatic step that will lead to the GPL society.
People have to want this process. However, I'm quite
optimistic that they will, because Free Software shows
us, in microcosm, how a better life would look, so the
GPL Society is in the best interest of people. And
Oekonux is there to understand the process of this
change, and perhaps at some point our thoughts may
help to push the development forward :-) .</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>3.0</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: [graham@seul.org: Re: [ox-en] Threads "The Fading Altruism of Open Source" on &lt;nettime&gt;]</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Fri, 18 Jan 2002 14:15:21 +0100</date>
<content>Am Mon, 14.Jan.2002 um 23:51:38 +0100x schrieb jaromil:

[quoting Graham Seaman from seul.org:]

&gt; 3. They've provided a prediction as to what should happen as the recession
&gt; in technology hits in America - the number of people writing free software
&gt; should go through the roof. I don't think there's going to be any such 
&gt; event - but it should be something perfectly testable (just watch 
&gt; freshmeat and compare the number of entries from Stefan Merten with the 
&gt; number from Americans ;-).

In an interview on &lt;http://kerneltrap.com/article.php?sid=459&gt;, Matt
Dillon, a major developer of the FreeBSD operating system (and former
Linux kernel hacker), has its own answer on whether Free Software is
altruistic or not. It is, without knowing it, quite a good response to
the recent on the economy of Free Software in Nettime (and, apparently,
Oekonux):

   Matt Dillon: Well, I could say something about open-source in
   general. Specifically I would like to say something about open-source
   and making money. There are two kinds of open-source programmers
   in the world. No, make that three kinds: There is the open-source
   programmer who is still in school, the open-source programmer who has
   a real job, and the open-source programmer who tries to make a living
   out of his open-source programming.

   In many respects, each individual goes through ALL of the above
   phases. We've all been in (or are in) school, we all must eventually
   make a living, and having been somewhat disillusioned by real
   work we have all either tried or will try to make a living from
   our open-source endevours. This last item -- making a living from
   open-source, has been over-stressed by the open source community
   (mainly Linux related developers) over the last few years. Guys, if
   you haven't figured it out by now it is mostly an illusion! The hype
   made it possible. The crazy stock market made it possible, but it
   didn't last now did it? If I take a hundred people I know only two or
   three can make a living from their open-source work (and I'm not one
   of them today!).

   The open-source community has to come to terms with this. Don't let
   it get you down! I read LWN.NET (Linux Weekly News) every week and I
   see a definite trend towards mass depression as the internet craze
   settles down into something a bit more sustainable. Don't let it get
   to you! Face the issue squarely and come to terms with what it means
   for your own work. If an older generation (that's me! At 35! God I
   feel old!) can teach the younger generation of programmers/hackers
   anything it is that the character of open-source will always be with
   us, with or without wall-street, and that we open-source programmers
   do not do these things for a 5-minute spot on CNN, we do these things
   because they are cool, and interesting, and make the world a better
   place for everyone. That is our legacy. We are not an anarchy, we are
   a charity. A very *LARGE* charity I might add!
Florian

-- 
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html
GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.0</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Keith Hart</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 04:32:30 -0500</date>
<content>It appears we cant even agree that one major difference between Free
Software and Open Source/Linux is the attitude to money and hence to
capitalism. Jaromil (below) thinks a statement posted on the net by the
politburo settles the issue. But read Florian's 'in it for the money' and
even more Stefan Merten's interview, where he imagines a society 'beyond
labour, money and exchange' (both below).

Jaromil:

&gt;Free software is a matter of freedom, not price; the word "free"
&gt;has to be intended in this way here. Furthermore, referring to the
&gt;wrong assumption by Keith Hart in this thread:
&gt;&gt; The open source movement is split on the issue of exchange and money
&gt;&gt; payment. Those who follow the Free Software Foundation appear to
&gt;&gt; consider that any hint of money and exchange, even of reciprocity,
&gt;&gt; leads directly to unacceptable compromise with capitalism.
&gt;refer to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html to have a clear
&gt;point about the free-speech / free-beer issue.

Florian Cramer:

&gt;The real amount of altruism in Free Software
&gt;development may be debated, but any programmer who's mostly or even only
&gt;in it for the money would be stupid to program anything but proprietary
&gt;software (which, no doubt, is more profitable).

Interview with Stefan Merten, Oekonux, nettime, 7/12/01:

&gt;But whereas Free Software
&gt;emphasizes the freedom Free Software gives the users,
&gt;Open Source does not care about freedom. The Open
&gt;Source Initiative (OSI) was founded exactly for the
&gt;reason to make Free Software compatible with business
&gt;people's thinking, and the word "freedom" has been
&gt;considered harmful for that purpose. 

&gt;I had the idea that Free Software is something very
&gt;special and may have a real potential for a different
&gt;society beyond labor, money, exchange - in short:
&gt;capitalism - in 1998. 

As it happens, I had come across the free speech/free beer distinction
without having to consult the gnu website. It still seems to me that the
freedom of Free Software is largely, but not exclusively tied up with the
normative absence of money. This allows the purists to insist that those
who wish to work across the divide 'do not care about freedom' or are 'only
in it for the money'. And behind that, of course, is a desire to preserve
the mystique of a hacker elite.

Keith Hart</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.1</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Felix Stalder</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 10:22:41 -0500</date>
<content>&gt;As it happens, I had come across the free speech/free beer distinction
&gt;without having to consult the gnu website.

I think the free speech / free beer distinction is really counterproductive
at this point. I understand it's historical value in rallying US hackers in
the context of a culture that fetishes "individual freedom" to a degree
that it's something that one has no longer to explain or argue for. Free
speech = good, in all circumstances. I'm not arguing against free speech,
what I'm arguing against is the idea that free speech offers a good
metaphor to understand the value of free software / open source.

Lessig, in his new book The Future of Ideas, offers a much better
definition for what "free" in this context means. He writes: "a resource is
'free' if (1) one can use it without permission of anyone else; or (2) the
permission one needs is granted neutrally" (p.12). Our roads, for example,
are free in Lessig's sense. This is the case even if a toll charge is
levied because the charge is imposed neutrally. Everyone pays the same
price independent of the purpose of driving on the road. A road would no
longer be free if, say, Coke had sponsored its construction and therefore
could prohibit Pepsi trucks from using it.

In this definition, there is no difference  in the freedom created by open
source or free software.
&gt;It still seems to me that the
&gt;freedom of Free Software is largely, but not exclusively tied up with the
&gt;normative absence of money. This allows the purists to insist that those
&gt;who wish to work across the divide 'do not care about freedom' or are 'only
&gt;in it for the money'. And behind that, of course, is a desire to preserve
&gt;the mystique of a hacker elite.

I agree with Keith, the absence of money per se is not a virtue. Insisting
on the evils of money in all contexts, is the simple inversion of the
capitalist logic which says making money per se is good.  The
transformation of resources and their impact is what really matters. And so
far, I haven't seen anyone who could show the open source approach
transfers time and money (or donated hardware if you prefer) into worse
code or less code than the FSF approach.

Felix

--------------------++-----
Les faits sont faits.
http://felix.openflows.org</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.2</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:31:43 +0100</date>
<content>Am Wed, 19.Dec.2001 um 10:22:41 -0500 schrieb Felix Stalder:

&gt; capitalist logic which says making money per se is good.  The
&gt; transformation of resources and their impact is what really matters. And
&gt; so far, I haven't seen anyone who could show the open source approach
&gt; transfers time and money (or donated hardware if you prefer) into worse
&gt; code or less code than the FSF approach.

By all probability not, because Free Software and Open Source are
technically the same - the "Open Source Definition" is almost identical
to the "Debian Free Software Guidelines" [and was drafted by the very
same author, Bruce Perens]. The both terms don't even describe
differences in development methodology. They are diverge in
philosophical and political terms: "Open Source" is, according to those
who launched the term, about technically better software ("software that
sucks less"), "Free Software" is about old-hacker-school freedom of
information. - 

It's quite ironical that other net cultures - such as this one here -
has gotten it the other way round.

Felix, one may of course say that the "Free Software" notion of freedom
is naive, but on the other hand the GNU-style "Free Software" movement
remains the only one to date that had a consistent agenda and politics
against the proprietarization of code and knowledge. (And many of those
who dismissed the FSF positions as obnoxious hippie fundamentalistm have
changed their mind since DMCA, DCSS and Sklyarov.)

The point is not that, say, "Linux" would stand (as "Open Source")
against "GNU" (as "Free Software"). The term "Open Source" was coined
and disseminated by Eric S. Raymond very late, in 1998, as a rebranding
for code that preceded the term for ears or even decades (including GNU,
Linux, BSD, Apache, Perl, sendmail etc.) and which had simply been
called Free Software before.

Florian

-- 
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html
GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.3</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] RE: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Kermit Snelson</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 22:21:08 -0800</date>
<content>Florian Cramer:

&gt; By all probability not, because Free Software and Open Source are
&gt; technically the same

This is true, and the fact may be demonstrated by examining the two lists of
licenses evaluated by the Open Source Initiative [1] and the Free Software
Foundation [2] respectively.  Of the dozens of software licenses that may be
clearly identified as being on both lists, only the Apple Public Source
License is considered "open source" by the OSI but "Non-Free" by the FSF.
That one exception may, moreover, be due more to political than technical
reasons.  The FSF accepts the rest as "free software" licenses, although it
nonetheless deprecates many of these as "GPL-Incompatible."

Keith Hart:

&gt; It appears we cant even agree that one major difference between Free
&gt; Software and Open Source/Linux is the attitude to money and hence to
&gt; capitalism.

The two camps have indeed taken very different rhetorical paths to what are
demonstrably identical conclusions.  I am less optimistic than Felix, who
interprets this as evidence of a great movement that is capable of absorbing
"very different, even contradictory ideas."  I see it the other way around,
namely as a single idea that has been absorbing different movements.

There's no other explanation, I think, for the fact that we're hearing so
much group singing lately between left-leaning communitarians and the
libertarian right, and not only on the finer points of software license
agreements.  Keith's recent proposal in this thread to vacate the legal
monopoly of central banks on the issue of legal tender certainly has the
potential to throw yet another log on this cozy campfire.

Kermit Snelson

Notes:
[1] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html
[2] http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.4</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] RE: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Heiko Recktenwald</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Thu, 20 Dec 2001 17:15:55 +0100 (CET)</date>
<content>&gt; This is true, and the fact may be demonstrated by examining the two lists of
&gt; licenses evaluated by the Open Source Initiative [1] and the Free Software
&gt; Foundation [2] respectively.  Of the dozens of software licenses that may be

You take this blabla much to serious. "Open Source" for example isnt just
an idea, a good idea like BSD licences, GNU etc, but first of all it is a
label. Something for the "No logo" book. This labelism of the different
initiatives has nothing to do with the central concept. Maybe this is why
I dont like Linux. So much chaos and desktop cosmetics. I stay with
FreeBSD. And I like GNU.
H.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.5</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Talan Memmott</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Thu, 20 Dec 2001 13:51:21 -0800</date>
<content>&gt; The point is not that, say, "Linux" would stand (as "Open Source") against
&gt; "GNU" (as "Free Software"). The term "Open Source" was coined and
&gt; disseminated by Eric S. Raymond very late, in 1998, as a rebranding for
&gt; code that preceded the term for ears or even decades (including GNU,
&gt; Linux, BSD, Apache, Perl, sendmail etc.) and which had simply been called
&gt; Free Software before.

Just thinking about this a bit.....

The Open Source examples, seem almost like 'terra' for the net...  BSD,
Aplache, Perl, sendmail....
Something like 'Open Source' becomes 'Open Space'...
Overgrown from some feudal practice of power... Beyond Governance... Great
Plains...</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.6</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt;The Fading Altruism of Open Sour</subject>
<from>Harald Hillgärtner</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Fri, 21 Dec 2001 19:49:16 +0100</date>
<content>Am Donnerstag, 20. Dezember 2001 17:15 schrieb Heiko Recktenwald:

&gt; &gt; This is true, and the fact may be demonstrated by examining the two lists
&gt; &gt; of licenses evaluated by the Open Source Initiative [1] and the Free
&gt; &gt; Software Foundation [2] respectively.  Of the dozens of software licenses
&gt; &gt; that may be
&gt;
&gt; You take this blabla much to serious. "Open Source" for example isnt just
&gt; an idea, a good idea like BSD licences, GNU etc, but first of all it is a
&gt; label. Something for the "No logo" book. This labelism of the different
&gt; initiatives has nothing to do with the central concept. Maybe this is why
&gt; I dont like Linux. So much chaos and desktop cosmetics. I stay with
&gt; FreeBSD. And I like GNU.

... And I do like GNU/Linux, cause it's both Free Software, and I really like 
plurality (or "chaos" in other words). In addition I like "dektop cosmetics" 
and a commando line interface on the same time on the same machine, cause I 
can use both on specific tasks and I like the idea of "non-proprietarization 
of code and knowledge", which is the main difference between Open Source and 
Free Software and which is one of the most valid argument in this debate 
(thanks to Florian Cramer). And this idea of non-proprietarization is the 
lesson, which has to be learned by the proprietarization of Unix in the 80s.
Harald.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.0</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Wed, 12 Dec 2001 15:43:05 +0100</date>
<content>Am Wed, 12.Dec.2001 um 00:56:27 +0100 schrieb oliver frommel:
 
&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Development by David Lancashire
&gt; First Monday, volume 6, number 12 (December 2001),
&gt; URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_12/lancashire/index.html

Thanks for providing the link!

To quote from the article and attempt some answers:

&gt;&gt; The most fundamental question of all: why does open source
&gt;&gt; development occur in the first place?

This question applies as well to, say, Nettime (where people freely give
away their some of their intellectual work) and all other non-profit
volunteer projects. The work of Free Software may just be more pervasive
and hence visible to scholars than other volunteer projects because (a)
it translates very immediately into everyday use value, (b) its products
are infinitely reproducible (also true for Nettime, but not true for all
non-Internet volunteer work). - And: Free Software may be the most
sophisticated non-profit volunteer project in the way it ensures the
free circulation of its products, through the copyleft.

David Lancashire's article is an interesting read about the regional
distribution of Free Software development, yet as I think problematic or
even wrong in many of its core assumptions. But, after of all, I do not
see the claim the title makes, "The Fading Altruism of Open Source
Development" backed up or elaborated anywhere in the text.

While the First Monday article recognizes the entanglement of Free
Software development with academia to some degree, it fails, in my view,
to interpret this entanglement in cultural and economical terms.  Free
Software development grew and continues to grow out of student projects
at university computer science departments (MIT: GNU project and X11, UC
Berkeley: BSD Unix, University of Helsinki: Linux, Universität Tübingen:
KDE), and the Free Software copyleft was invented to preserve the
traditional academic freedom of information for computer code.

Other points:

&gt;&gt; The combination of highly-complex and anti-proprietary projects offers
&gt;&gt; the only quadrant in which the tension - between economic and cultural
&gt;&gt; assumptions about underlying human behavior can meaningfully be
&gt;&gt; compared. It is an unfortunate fact then, if a somewhat revealing one on
&gt;&gt; its own, that there are so few successful projects which fall into this
&gt;&gt; category. 

To me it rather seems an unfortunate, if a somewhat revealing fact what 
the author David Lancashire thinks are facts of Free Software:

&gt;&gt; Linux, an operating system begun in 1991 in order to provide a
&gt;&gt; free alternative to commercial UNIX systems, is the most prominent
&gt;&gt; example.   The second-most so is undoubtedly GNOME, a free graphical-user
&gt;&gt; interface (GUI) for UNIX-compatible systems begun in 1996 to compete
&gt;&gt; with the partly privately-owned K-Desktop Environment (KDE) suite for
&gt;&gt; UNIX and the completely proprietary Microsoft Windows. 

- Linux is an operating system kernel started in 1991 which, by itself
  (i.e.  without a compiler, linker, bootloader and core system
  libraries, init and login daemons and userspace operating system
  tools), is a non-functional piece of software. As a matter of fact, it
  was started not to provide a free alternative to proprietary Unices,
  but a POSIX-compliant (i.e. more functionally more complete)
  alternative to Andrew Tanenbaum's free Minix operating system.

- Not Linux, but GNU was started (in 1984) in order to provide the free
  alternative to commercial (proprietary) Unix systems. It ended up
  creating fully functional free equivalents of all core Unix
  components(compiler, linker, system libraries, userspace operating
  system tools - the contents of /bin, /sbin and /lib on any "Linux
  distribution" is almost 100% GNU) except the kernel. 

It's easy to claim, as in the above quote, there is a lack of
"highly-complex and anti-proprietary" Free Software if one doesn't seem
to know GNU, the free BSD operating systems (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD),
the X Window System, Mozilla, the Debian GNU/Linux distribution - and
wilfully excludes gcc, Perl, Python, PHP, PostgreSQL, Emacs, Apache,
sendmail and other highly complex Free Software projects from one's
consideration. 

What's more, Lancashire makes questionable assumptions about Gnome, KDE
and Windows;

- KDE is not "privately owned" in any way, but one of the most
  decentralized and non-corporate Free Software projects. Its code is
  released under the GNU General Public License (GPL); it relies on a
  library ("Qt") which is developed by a company, but equally available
  under two Free Software licenses including the GPL since a couple of
  time. (The fact that Qt was proprietary is history; and Qt never was a
  part of KDE itself.)

- Quite on the contrary to the assumptions of the article, Gnome
  development is much more in corporate hands: The core developers are
  employed by Ximian and RedHat (with Ximian, the company of Gnome's
  founder and project leader Miguel de Icaza, being the major driving
  force). 
  
  In addition, Gnome development is supervised by the "Gnome Foundation"
  whose function is to, official quote, "coordinate releases of GNOME
  and determine which projects are part of GNOME" and "act as an
  official voice for the GNOME project" &lt;http://foundation.gnome.org&gt;.
  Members of the Gnome Foundation include, next to free developers,
  Ximian, RedHat, Hewlett-Packard and Sun. (Sun also made Gnome the new
  desktop interface of its proprietary Unix "Solaris".)

- The comparison of KDE and Gnome to Windows is mismatched. Both KDE and
  Gnome are only sets of (a) high-level libraries and component models
  and (b) basic graphical desktop user components (menus, window
  manager, file managers, configuration panels, utilities); they are not
  desktop operating systems on their own, but operate on top of "third
  party" graphical user interface libraries (Qt and GTK respectively)
  which in turn operate on top of a "third party" graphical display
  engine (= the X Window System) which in turn operates on top of "third
  party" core operating systems (GNU/Linux, *BSD, proprietary Unices
  etc.). 

  Windows, on the other hand, has always been a unit of a graphical
  display engine (GDI), graphical user interfaces libraries (MFC),
  high-level desktop components (OLE/Com) and basic graphical desktop
  user components (Explorer, Start menu etc.) on top of a core operating
  system (DOS) and has become a fully self-contained operating system
  including kernel, OS userspace, graphical display engine at least
  since Windows NT 3.51.

&gt;&gt; With a combined total of over 430 developers, no other two projects
&gt;&gt; approach the "authority" of these cases as benchmark examples of
&gt;&gt; their kind, 

This is wrong, and so I doubt the study has a good empirical base. The
(truly non-corporate) Debian project &lt;http://www.debian.org&gt; alone has
908 regular developers. In the case of Gnome, the results concerning
US-American and non-US-American involvement are likely to be distorted
by the fact that it is largely an American project with US-American
companies involved - while the (more or less competing) KDE project is
largely a project of European developers. (This interesting cultural
split has been noted several times on Slashdot.org, an American forum
which, sincle a couple of months, shifted its own bias from Gnome to
KDE). 

After all, the study's _economical_ analysis seems questionable to me
becaiuse it does not - but should - differentiate between "private"/
"privately owned"/"commercial" on the one hand and "proprietary" one the
other (as in the second-last quote). As many Free Software projects -
like the RedHat GPL Edition, RedHat's/Cygnus' GNU C compiler, GNU
ghostscript, Ximian Gnome, Ximian Evolution, Trolltech's Qt -
demonstrate, "commercial" doesn't have to mean "proprietary". In fact,
the GNU project involved commercial operations from the beginning on.
Richard Stallman financed the Free Software Foundation (and kept himself
alive) by expensively selling GNU software on streamer tapes.
Interviewed in 1984, the BSD project leader and inventor of the "vi"
editor Bill Joy said about GNU Emacs that it was "a nice editor too, but
because it costs hundreds of dollars, there will always be people who
won't buy it." &lt;http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~kirkenda/joy84.html&gt;

Some other quotes:

&gt;&gt; Mexico contributes three times as many developers to Gnome as Linux,
&gt;&gt; and Finland (perhaps understandably considering its status as the
&gt;&gt; homeland of Linus Torvalds) appears unwaveringly in the Linux camp. 

The high involvement of Mexicans in Gnome would probably have surprised
the author as little as the high involvement of Finns in Linux if he
knew that the Gnome project was founded in Mexico by a Mexican, Miguel
de Icaza, who continues to be its chief developer.

Perhaps another proof for the problematic empirics of the study:

&gt;&gt; If this simplified model can explain the relative erosion of open
&gt;&gt; source production in the United States, can it explain the rise of it
&gt;&gt; Europe? Primarily, it should be clear that if the opportunity cost of
&gt;&gt; working on open source projects is lower for European developers than
&gt;&gt; their American counterparts, the potential benefits Europeans gain
&gt;&gt; from working on them are much greater as well. In a global economy
&gt;&gt; lacking perfect labor mobility and characterized by wage-inequality
&gt;&gt; across countries, we expect individuals to produce free software if
&gt;&gt; doing so can help them shift to a higher wage-level. This
&gt;&gt; "fixed-cost" analysis implies (as Lerner and Tirole suggest in their
&gt;&gt; paper) that developers may embrace open source work as a way to
&gt;&gt; tap-into lucrative corporate networks abroad. This may explain why
&gt;&gt; open source development is more popular in Canada than the United
&gt;&gt; States, although the data from Europe is inconclusive on this
&gt;&gt; question. This also helps to explain why the majority of open source
&gt;&gt; developers are relatively young. Older, settled programmers have less
&gt;&gt; need to establish a monetizable reputation than their younger, more
&gt;&gt; mobile counterparts, given less time in which to amortize its
&gt;&gt; immediate costs.

My own casual insight into free software hacking rather suggests that

(a) free software developers are younger because they are typically
students or freshly graduated - and probably more idealistic than older
people, 

(b) free software developers are disproportionally located in Europe
because the public acceptance and deployment of free software is higher
(in relative terms) in Europe than in the US, resulting in a condition
where

- many computer science departments make Free Software development part
  of their curriculum and encourage to write Free Software as C.S.
  diploma projects. (Linux, for example, was Linus Torvald's diploma
  project at the C.S. department of the University of Helsinki.) After
  all, C.S. departments and university computing centers had a pressing
  need for a free Unix-compatible operating system. (AT&amp;T Unix used to
  be almost free for universities in the 1970s but was relicensed after
  the AT&amp;T breakup.)

  When I first visited meeting of my local Linux User Group in 1996,
  they took place in the C.S. department of a local university whose
  department white board proposed several Linux kernel hacks as diploma
  projects.

- Because of the higher deployment of Free Software in Europe, European
  C.S. graduates may have a higher chance to work in Free Software
  environments on in-house projects (databases and network
  infrastructures, embedded controllers etc.).  Even if these projects
  are not for public release, they typically generate free code (or free
  documentation) on the side, because other free software had to be
  bugfixed/extended for the project purpose or simply because a certain
  tool had to be written to accomplish a certain task within a project.

While Linus Torvalds and Miguel de Icaza used their reputation to go
abroad and work in the U.S., proving that this indeed may be a
motivation to write Free Software, this certainly fails as a general
model and explanation.  - Why, then, is it that Indian and Russian
programmers hardly contribute to Free Software development at all?

Many Free Software developers I know have left-wing political views
though and see work on Free Software as unalienated labour for which
they are willing to make economical sacrifices.  

- A motivation and lifestyle that I guess everyone who works in the
arts, academia or media (and probably everyone on Nettime) knows quite 
well...

Florian
P.S.: While I have great sympathy for the conclusion that...

&gt;&gt; the insights political economists can shed on these movements allow
&gt;&gt; for a much more nuanced view of development than is made by advocates
&gt;&gt; of post-scarcity gift cultures. 

...and think it is necessary 

(a) to revise Raymond's enthusiastic distortion of the (quite nonideal)
gift cultures described by Marcel Mauss

(b) not to speak of "post-scarcity economics" by falsly drawing from
non-scarce immaterial goods (=software and information which is scarce
only in its dependence on material carriers/hardware) to scarce material
goods (energy, food, clothing, housing, etc.), 

it still remains true that, since the 1980s, the software industry has
made software artificially scarce by declaring it a material commodity.
A questionable and, via the enforcement of "intellectual property" laws,
increasingly totalitarian commodification to which Free Software
provides an alternative. (- An alternative with the well-known downsides
of economic self-exploitation of its producers, although they [still]
are in an economically more comfortable position than those working in
other fields of culture.)
P.P.S.: The fact that the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, probably the
largest high-quality collection of Free Software, has grown to six full
CD-ROMs/4 GB of compiled binaries (from two CD-ROMs back in 1997) is my
empirical evidence against any claim about "the fading altruism in Free
Software development".  

--
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html
GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.1</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>Craig Brozefsky</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>12 Dec 2001 10:42:10 -0600</date>
<content>oliver frommel &lt;oliver@firstfloor.org&gt; writes:

&gt; hello,
&gt; 
&gt; i don't know if this has already passed the nettime mailing list but i 
&gt; could not find anything in the archive .. it is a fairly interesting 
&gt; article about the economic and cultural background of free software 
&gt; development. it is long and has a lot of images so i only post the url ..
&gt; 
&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Development by David Lancashire
&gt; First Monday, volume 6, number 12 (December 2001),
&gt; URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_12/lancashire/index.html

I started reading this and then I got to the outline of their analysis
was immediately turned off.  It's like the guy looking for his car
keys under the street lamp cause that is where it's brightest.
-- 
Craig Brozefsky                             &lt;craig@red-bean.com&gt;
                                		http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Ask me about Common Lisp Enterprise Eggplants at Red Bean!</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.2</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>Felix Stalder</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Wed, 12 Dec 2001 12:39:49 -0500</date>
<content>I never understood why people think of Open Source in terms of _altruism_.
Perhaps, it's due to some confusion related to the "saintly" image of
Richard Stallman, but it's the completely wrong approach and shows a very
limited understanding of economic relationships where things are more
varied than than selling things vs giving them away.

To make a long argument short, altruism is, if anything, the effect of Open
Source but not its cause. For Open Source to work, people do not need to be
altruistic, or at least not all of them. As far as I can see, many of the
developers who contribute to Open Source do so in the context of their
professional work, be it as members of academic institutions -- where
publishing and visibility has nothing to do with altruism but is a
necessity of survival -- or in the context of companies who use and extend
Open Source software in the work they do for clients.

But let's forget for a moment software and look at another great Open
Source project: the law. Nobody would claim lawyers as a profession to be
altruistic, even though there are certainly individuals with altruistic
motives. Many of them are highly paid and some are very much motivated by
money. Nevertheless, they all contribute to a great Open Source project.
The law and the court proceedings (ie. the code) are public and if you
want, you can use an argument made in one case by someone else in your own
case. In fact, this is standard practice and crucial to the efficient
working of the legal system. This is how the system learns and evolves and
how it avoids to be clogged with an endless numbers of identical cases. If
lawyers could copyright their arguments (i.e. restrict other lawyers from
using them), the system would break down, particularly the Anglo-American
system of common law.

In some ways, creating the law is similar to creating software. The first
copy (i.e. deciding the first case in a new area) tends to be very
expensive, but subsequent copies (i.e. deciding further similar cases) are
much cheaper.

The problem -- and the reason why lawyers make a good living -- is that
there are rarely identical cases, or, at the very least, it is very hard to
tell if a case is identical to one that has already passed through system.
What you pay a lawyer for is her knowlegde of the relevant cases and her
work to take whatever necessary from them and then customize it for your
own context and needs. Sometimes this "customization" is relatively
trivial, sometime this includes a significant contribution to the evolving
public knowledge base.

To some degree, the same model applies to Open Source Software development.
What you pay, say, IBM for when they install a new server with Linux on it,
is the service they provide to you for customizing what is out there (Linux
etc.) to your own ideosynractic needs. And rarely, your needs are exactly
the same than other people's needs.

Many people who contribute to Open Source Software work in contexts that
produce software but don't sell it. Be it that they are academics/students
or be it that they sell services. Taking from and contributing to free code
is in both cases a strategy that makes sense for very "selfish" reasons,
even though they also contribute to the free knowledge base.

--------------------++-----
Les faits sont faits.
http://felix.openflows.org</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.3</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>oliver frommel</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Wed, 12 Dec 2001 22:38:52 +0100 (CET)</date>
<content>
On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Florian Cramer wrote:

&gt; .. 
&gt; It's easy to claim, as in the above quote, there is a lack of
&gt; "highly-complex and anti-proprietary" Free Software if one doesn't seem to
&gt; know GNU, the free BSD operating systems (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD), the X
&gt; Window System, Mozilla, the Debian GNU/Linux distribution - and wilfully
&gt; excludes gcc, Perl, Python, PHP, PostgreSQL, Emacs, Apache, sendmail and
&gt; other highly complex Free Software projects from one's consideration.
&gt;

this is true but there are a lot of "parallel projects" trying to make 
money from free software (through consulting mainly, in accordance with 
stallman's views, or customization of free software). 

e.g. activestate tries to make money from perl, python, mozilla, php ..
(www.activestate.com)
"Sendmail, Inc. develops commercial products and services
that simplify the deployment of sendmail" (www.sendmail.org)

postgresql offers commercial support
http://www.ca.postgresql.org/users-lounge/commercial-support.html

a lot of development on the gnu c (and others) compiler system was 
traditionally done by the cygnus corporation (now integrated into redhat)

when you look at a lot of recent projects like e.g. JBOSS (www.jboss.org)
that use "industry standards" like the j2ee (java2 enterprise edition) it 
is clearly not the fun that is the primary motivation for the free 
software programmers in this field.

I do not criticize people making money through consulting etc. but it I 
think you need to take that into consideration as the author of the 
article does.

I think you are right in stressing the difference between commercial 
(what? software? enterprises? ..) and proprietery software. But if you 
take into consideration that "free" software does create complex 
relationships I find it hard to accept a synthetic seperation between the 
software product "as such" and the dependencies it creates. Think of the
creation of industry standards making users and developers somehow 
dependent on the original creator. complex software makes its users 
dependent in the developers. 


&gt; 
&gt; While Linus Torvalds and Miguel de Icaza used their reputation to go
&gt; abroad and work in the U.S., proving that this indeed may be a motivation
&gt; to write Free Software, this certainly fails as a general model and
&gt; explanation.  - Why, then, is it that Indian and Russian programmers
&gt; hardly contribute to Free Software development at all?
&gt;

There are some developers from Russia. E.g. Alexey Kuznetsov has done a 
lot of work on the networking code. This shows a weakness of Lancashire's
empirical research: it neglects the quality of contributions to free 
software, even the quantity of contributions per developer. 

 
&gt; Many Free Software developers I know have left-wing political views though
&gt; and see work on Free Software as unalienated labour for which they are
&gt; willing to make economical sacrifices.
&gt;

many software developers I know have right-wing libertarian views, with a 
strong disregard for what any possible end user might want. usually a lot 
of free software developers don't even regard other human beings as equal 
to any degree (this is what  Lancashire decribes in the paragraph about 
Neuromancer, Turkle etc.). You might recognize a certain misogynous 
attitude in hacker culture in general ("GUIs are for girls", "real men use 
command line", "real men use linux", you could go on like this for quite 
a while). The same goes for "gay operating systems" and so on. It would be 
interesting to analyze the composition of the "free software community" in 
terms of race for this matter (I remember irc sessions with about 100 
people doing free software development with participants mainly from the 
US, among all one african american, having to fight permanent harassment). 
For me this shows that any explanations in terms of gift or even GPL 
culture are less plausible than Lancashire's analysis which still might 
have its own flaws.

Oliver</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.4</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>scotartt</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Thu, 13 Dec 2001 13:15:13 +1100</date>
<content>On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 10:38:52PM +0100, oliver frommel wrote:

&gt; when you look at a lot of recent projects like e.g. JBOSS (www.jboss.org)
&gt; that use \"industry standards\" like the j2ee (java2 enterprise edition) it
&gt; is clearly not the fun that is the primary motivation for the free
&gt; software programmers in this field.


Well, look at the Jakarta Tomcat servlet engine, which is *the* standard
servlet engine, not just *a* standard servlet engine. Tomcat is the
\"reference implementation\" of the Servlet specification of Sun
Microsystems' J2EE standard.

And IBM gave away a big chunk of it's IDE code to the Eclipse project; the
idea is an open source development environment that is modular and can
be extended with both proprietry _and_ open source solutions. Also part of
IBM's Websphere use the Jakarta ANT product in it, as well as the fact
that their webserver technology is based on Apache. IBM, and lots of other
big IT corporates like Oracle, have embraced both Java (ultimately owned
by their competitor, Sun Microsystems, although now opened to a 'community
process'), and indeed, Linux and Open Source.

The open source paradigm has been well embraced by many large IT
corporations. Jakarta project products are found in widespread use
throughout corporate development.

regards
scot.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.5</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>Heiko Recktenwald</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Thu, 13 Dec 2001 04:10:28 +0100 (CET)</date>
<content>Hi,

On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Felix Stalder wrote:

&gt; I never understood why people think of Open Source in terms of _altruism_.

&gt; But let's forget for a moment software and look at another great Open
&gt; Source project: the law. Nobody would claim lawyers as a profession to be
&gt; altruistic, even though there are certainly individuals with altruistic
&gt; motives. Many of them are highly paid and some are very much motivated by

Isnt the legal system in some form "altruistic" per se ?

But I wouldnt call it "Open Source". Casebooks are books. Ideas are free
anyway. At least outside of the world of patents for gifs etc..


H.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.6</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>Keith Hart</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Thu, 13 Dec 2001 13:51:18 -0500</date>
<content>This message is triggered by Felix Stalder's of the above header. Felix and
I appeared together on a panel he organised from the wos2 conference in
Berlin during October. It was entitled open_money, a subject I will return
to below, as a way of introducing my own writing. But first I want to
comment on his remarks about altruism and the law in relation to open
source. I should say that I find us in broad agreement on the general issue
of open source, the internet and democracy.

The opposition selfish/altruistic is depressing because it speaks of a huge
gap between the individual and society. This corresponds to our experience,
where we are told on the one hand that each of us is a unique subjective
personality, while society is a mass of remote objects governed by forces
we neither understand nor can influence. The task of personal development
and social organisation is rather to find way ways of integrating the two,
the individual and the collective, self-in-the-world. And the most
longlasting human arrangements do precisely that. We have to be
self-reliant to a high degree and we have to learn to belong to others, to
be connected at the same time. This is the human predicament and few
entirely succeed. The issue therefore is not to be either selfish or
altruistic -- each position is childish -- but to aim for what I think of
as the human idea, to combine self-interest with recogniton that the
interest of everyone else in society affects us too, thereby dissolving the
contradiction between the individual and the collective. I would claim that
this principle was independently invented twice, by Gautama and John Locke.
But that would take us a bit far from what I want to say. 

I wish to take issue with Felix's argument that the law in contemporary
western societies offers an unambiguous point of reference for assessing
the value of open source software development. It is true that English
common law is unusual in making public law the normative outcome of
individual citizens exercising their rights, with a heavy reliance on
judicial precedent over statutary law. It is also true that the body of
case law is available to lawyers as a basis for their arguments. But I
think it would be wrong to say that the law is therefore open in the sense
that all citizens have free access to it. First, as Felix implies, the law
in many cultures is dualistic in a way that English common law was intended
not to be. In most European languages there are two words for law, not one
(eg loi/droit), reflecting a sharp division between public and private law,
between the state and the people. Second, for centuries the judges and the
legal profession have operated with a jargon that is closed to the general
public. Third, access to the law, never mind justice, has been highly
stratified. I could go on. Michael Lewis's recent book on the astonishing
achievements of kids using the internet (The Future Just Happened, 2001)
includes the case of a 15 year old who became the most highly ranked legal
adviser on an internet site heavily populated by professional lawyers.The
medical profession likewise once offered little hope that people might win
some measure of control over their own minds and bodies, a situation that
th einternet may be changing. And surely one test of a civilisation is
whether or not it helps its individual members to be self-reliant or
autonomous. Ours does not. The law then is a bad example for arguing that
open source software development can safely cross the border separating
sharing without payment from commerce.

The open source movement is split on the issue of exchange and money
payment. Those who follow the Free Software Foundation appear consider that
any hint of money and exchange, even of reciprocity, leads directly to
unacceptable compromise with capitalism. Linux, on the other hand, is
rapidly being integrated with big business. Feelings run high on both
sides, but especially on the first, which I would call purist, if not
puritan. At the same time, the controversy over Microsoft's monopoly and
the attempts to break it have pushed the open source movement into the
mainstream of political debate. It raises interesting questions about
whether some software developers are at the cutting edge of a new
democratic politics or perhaps are little different from lawyers and
doctors, in that their arcane practices are beyond the grasp of the vast
body of citizens. Does it matter if some of them do it without money
payment?

Perhaps a much bigger and related issue is whether the internet is fast
losing the freedom of its early years. Here the case of writers like
Lawrence Lessig (The Future of Ideas) is that private copyright, pushed by
corproate capital and the legal profession, is breaking up the internet
commons. The example of software development remains central to this case.
It all seems to me an entirely healthy recasting of the political debate in
terms that invite each of us to interrogate what we may have taken for
granted. What is the commons and does it matter whether we lose free access
to it? It means that the long argument about the social effects of markets
and capitalism can be extended not just to software engineering, but to the
street and parks, to language and literary traditions, indeed to the whole
social infrastructure we live by. My interest is in exploring the
possibility that money itself might become a commons to which all of us
would have open access, open source money, if you like, a money that,
instead of being supplied remotely by central agencies as a scarce
commdity, might be something we could all make for ourselves.

To this end, I have been working on community currencies for over a year
now with Michael Linton and Ernie Yacub in British Columbia. We are writing
a book called Common Wealth. The subtitle is less stable than the title. At
present it is 'building community and economic democracy with open money';
but it might be 'open money as a commons' or something like that. I hope to
share some of this writing in progress with the nettime list. But at this
stage, I would point readers towards a website: www.openmoney.org.

This is the second book on money I written recently. The first is Money in
an Unequal World (Texere, 2001), first published as The Memory Bank
(Profile, 2000). There is more about the book, including various
downloadable items at www.thememorybank.co.uk. My concern there is with the
conseqences of the communications revolution for the forms of money and
exchange. i suggest that money and language are the two great vehicles of
communication we have and that their development is converging. I also set
out to disentangle the market from capitalism, in the belief that more
humane and equal forms of exchange involving money are both possible and
necessary. This is the broad basis for my underlying agreement with the
position outlined by Felix in his message to the list. There is a lot more
to be said, but this is my way of introducing myself to the conversation
constituted by nettime.

Keith Hart

I never understood why people think of Open Source in terms of _altruism_.
Perhaps, it's due to some confusion related to the "saintly" image of
Richard Stallman, but it's the completely wrong approach and shows a very
limited understanding of economic relationships where things are more
varied than than selling things vs giving them away.

To make a long argument short, altruism is, if anything, the effect of Open
Source but not its cause. For Open Source to work, people do not need to be
altruistic, or at least not all of them. As far as I can see, many of the
developers who contribute to Open Source do so in the context of their
professional work, be it as members of academic institutions -- where
publishing and visibility has nothing to do with altruism but is a
necessity of survival -- or in the context of companies who use and extend
Open Source software in the work they do for clients.

But let's forget for a moment software and look at another great Open
Source project: the law. Nobody would claim lawyers as a profession to be
altruistic, even though there are certainly individuals with altruistic
motives. Many of them are highly paid and some are very much motivated by
money. Nevertheless, they all contribute to a great Open Source project.
The law and the court proceedings (ie. the code) are public and if you
want, you can use an argument made in one case by someone else in your own
case. In fact, this is standard practice and crucial to the efficient
working of the legal system. This is how the system learns and evolves and
how it avoids to be clogged with an endless numbers of identical cases. If
lawyers could copyright their arguments (i.e. restrict other lawyers from
using them), the system would break down, particularly the Anglo-American
system of common law.

In some ways, creating the law is similar to creating software. The first
copy (i.e. deciding the first case in a new area) tends to be very
expensive, but subsequent copies (i.e. deciding further similar cases) are
much cheaper.

The problem -- and the reason why lawyers make a good living -- is that
there are rarely identical cases, or, at the very least, it is very hard to
tell if a case is identical to one that has already passed through system.
What you pay a lawyer for is her knowlegde of the relevant cases and her
work to take whatever necessary from them and then customize it for your
own context and needs. Sometimes this "customization" is relatively
trivial, sometime this includes a significant contribution to the evolving
public knowledge base.

To some degree, the same model applies to Open Source Software development.
What you pay, say, IBM for when they install a new server with Linux on it,
is the service they provide to you for customizing what is out there (Linux
etc.) to your own ideosynractic needs. And rarely, your needs are exactly
the same than other people's needs.

Many people who contribute to Open Source Software work in contexts that
produce software but don't sell it. Be it that they are academics/students
or be it that they sell services. Taking from and contributing to free code
is in both cases a strategy that makes sense for very "selfish" reasons,
even though they also contribute to the free knowledge base.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.7</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] RE: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>Kermit Snelson</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Fri, 14 Dec 2001 23:37:51 -0800</date>
<content>The open source paradigm should not be identified with altruism.  This was
Felix's main point, and I very much agree.  I also agree that software
developers, like lawyers, can make a good living by selling their time
rather than licensing their product.  This is hardly news, however. (And the
example of US legal celebrities such as Alan Dershowitz and Melvin Belli
shows that the path to true riches in the law lies not on billable hours,
but on widely distributed and copyrighted product.)

But then Felix goes on to call the law "a great Open Source project."
Although it's clear to me that he intended this statement to serve only as a
qualified analogy, I think it's politically important for the record to show
that this is far from being the case in practice.  The fact is that large
amounts of the legal apparatus and of the law itself are copyrighted and
commercially licensed.

As Felix points out, the common law system requires that prior court
decisions be published and indexed.  This massive publishing task, however,
is carried out not primarily by governments, but for profit by large
commercial entities such as Thomson and Reed Elsevier.  The actual practice
of precedent-based law today depends on case, statute and authority finders,
nearly all of which are the extremely expensive and copyrighted products of
commercial publishing empires.

Not only is the legal research apparatus licensed at great expense, but
sometimes so are the statutes themselves.  Building codes, fire codes and
commercial codes provide many examples of laws that are written and
copyrighted by private organizations and then adopted as public law by the
legislatures.  In the USA, this has resulted in counterintuitive (to say the
least) situations in which state governments cannot hold copies of their own
laws without paying large royalties to the private corporations that wrote
them.  Needless to say, US citizens in such cases are also obliged to pay
these private organizations in order to learn the laws to which they are
subject.

In the UK the Crown asserts copyright on all laws, although it currently
waives its rights with respect to legislation.  But with respect to other
public assets such as Ordnance Survey mapping, it vigorously exercises the
Crown copyright with the express purpose of commercial exploitation.  The
assertion of Crown copyright on legislation makes it entirely legal for the
Crown to do the same with the public statutes should it so choose.

If the law holds a lesson for the open source software development paradigm,
it is that it is becoming extremely difficult even for governments to
finance the increasingly technical and massive task of creating and
administering the law without resorting to copyright and other restrictive
measures.  Universities are in a similar situation with respect to research.
Any political response to the threats posed by these developments to
democracy, free inquiry and free software must be based upon an objective
and accurate understanding of the economic and technical realities upon
which this political situation is based.

Kermit Snelson</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.8</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>jaromil</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Sun, 16 Dec 2001 19:26:43 +0100</date>
<content>On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 12:39:49AM -0500, Felix Stalder wrote:

&gt; I never understood why people think of Open Source in terms of
&gt; _altruism_.  Perhaps, it's due to some confusion related to the
&gt; "saintly" image of Richard Stallman, but it's the completely wrong
&gt; approach and shows a very limited understanding of economic
&gt; relationships where things are more varied than than selling things
&gt; vs giving them away.

On Fri, Dec 14, 2001 at 11:37:51PM -0800, Kermit Snelson wrote:

&gt; The open source paradigm should not be identified with altruism.
&gt; This was Felix's main point, and I very much agree.  I also agree
&gt; that software developers, like lawyers, can make a good living by
&gt; selling their time rather than licensing their product.  This is
&gt; hardly news, however.  (And the example of US legal celebrities such
&gt; as Alan Dershowitz and Melvin Belli shows that the path to true
&gt; riches in the law lies not on billable hours, but on widely
&gt; distributed and copyrighted product.)

By reading David Lancashire's article and by following this thread i
still don't understand if you're voluntarily blurring differences
between "free software" and "open source" or you are simply ignorant:
in the latter case please refer to
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html and
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/drdobbs-letter.html ; to be sure you
have it clear, i quote here a brief statement from the second
document:

 The GNU GPL embodies the firm philosophy of the free software
 movement; it doesn't come from the open source movement. I am not a
 supporter of the open source movement, and never have been. 
                                                   (Richard Stallman)

Once cleared such a crucial difference for the discussion i'd like to
add my point of view about free software: _it is_ altruism, it has a
philosophical background which is a solid spark in a free software
developer's mind; furthermore motivation is given as well by the
possibility to learn from and reuse code of other experienced
programmers willing to share knowledge and much is done also by a
development framework which finally _works_ as it should (and it's
free[1]! anybody here knows about the costs a programmer had to
sustain to distribute bytecode produced with a reliable compiler,
about 10 years ago? anyone ever read about the industrial revolution
and the role property of production systems played into it?); it's
about the pleasure to research into a field one is sincerely
interested, about the craftmanship spirit of self production which is
dramatically disappearing IRL substituted by mass-production
omologation.

Free software is about solidarity, quoting Richard Stallman in one of
his first theorizations on free software:

 Why I Must Write GNU

 I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I
 must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to
 divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to
 share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in
 this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement
 or a software license agreement. For years I worked within the
 Artificial Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other
 inhospitalities, but eventually they had gone too far: I could not
 remain in an institution where such things are done for me against my
 will.

 So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have
 decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I
 will be able to get along without any software that is not free. I
 have resigned from the AI lab to deny MIT any legal excuse to prevent
 me from giving GNU away.

 [...]

                                 "The GNU Manifesto", Richard Stallman
               Copyright (C) 1985, 1993 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
                          Permission is granted to anyone to make or
                          distribute verbatim copies of this document.

and of course it's about reputation which i would'nt define
"ego-boost": i see such a phenomenon much more present in other
contexts which right here i see engaging the katartical exercise of
blurring a different philosophy to make it easier to reach.

enfin, to mark distances, i must state "je ne parle pas logique, je
parle generosite" : this answer Andre Breton gave in an analog
situation makes me once again comfortable in underlying the
differences i see in our languages, and approaches.





[1] Free software is a matter of freedom, not price; the word "free"
has to be intended in this way here. Furthermore, referring to the
wrong assumption by Keith Hart in this thread:
&gt; The open source movement is split on the issue of exchange and money
&gt; payment. Those who follow the Free Software Foundation appear
&gt; consider that any hint of money and exchange, even of reciprocity,
&gt; leads directly to unacceptable compromise with capitalism.
refer to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html to have a clear
point about the free-speech / free-beer issue.

-- 
jaromil  ][   http://dyne.org   ][  GnuPG _key__id_
EDEE F1B9 DC92 76C0 6D46  D77A 58B0 82D6 (5B6E 6D97)</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.9</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] RE: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>Felix Stalder</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Sun, 16 Dec 2001 14:56:56 -0500</date>
<content>Kermit Snelson wrote:

&gt;But then Felix goes on to call the law "a great Open Source project."
&gt;Although it's clear to me that he intended this statement to serve only as a
&gt;qualified analogy, I think it's politically important for the record to show
&gt;that this is far from being the case in practice.

I entirely agree with your qualifications. Indeed, I intended the law
analogy as a very partial one. Besides the limitations that you point out,
there are obviously further aspects that make the legal system very
different from Open Source. Perhaps the most important is that in many
cases only members of a select group,  e.g. barred lawyers, are allowed to
practice the law. There is a clear, and vigorously maintained, difference
between professionals and lay people. The same difference exists in closed
source software. In the open source community, however, the boundaries
between developers and users are sliding and primarily dependent on dynamic
knowledge and commitment, rather than on static certification. This, I
think,  is a really important factor in the vitality of the movement.

The reason why I brought up the shaky analogy to law is to highlight that
there are other areas of our society that are based on a public knowledge
base (with the qualifications you added) and that this does not preclude,
for the better or worse, their inclusion into the main stream and nor their
economic viability.

Indeed, one could argue that many of the most sensitive aspects of a
democracy are based on publicly accessible knowledge (at least in theory)
and that it might be time to include the emerging information
infrastructure into this category. What a democracy needs is transparency,
accountability and participation, and open source can contribute to this on
a technical level.
Keith Hart wrote:

&gt;The opposition selfish/altruistic is depressing because it speaks of a huge
&gt;gap between the individual and society. This corresponds to our experience,
&gt;where we are told on the one hand that each of us is a unique subjective
&gt;personality, while society is a mass of remote objects governed by forces
&gt;we neither understand nor can influence. The task of personal development
&gt;and social organisation is rather to find way ways of integrating the two,
&gt;the individual and the collective, self-in-the-world.

When I talked about 'selfish' versus 'altruistic' motivations of open
source contributors,  I took them as opposites which are usually regarded
as mutually exclusive. What I meant was that the way the process is
currently organized there is no real difference between the two, or, to be
more precise, the difference is on the level of the personal input, rather
than in the systemic output. In other words, no matter why you produce open
source code, the result is always open source code, which someone else can
you to whatever purpose she sees fit. Because the code is open, it is
impossible to program a hidden agenda into open source code, in the way MS
software is rumored  to have hidden backdoors and secret keys. This, to
some degree, keeps the software neutral and prevents personal motivations
to be translated into code that would conflict with the motivations of
other members of the community.

There is a long-standing discussion over whether Open Source is left wing
or a right wing movement which also crept up in this thread.

Florian Cramer wrote:
&gt;Many Free Software developers I know have left-wing political views though
&gt;and see work on Free Software as unalienated labour for which they are
&gt;willing to make economical sacrifices.

To which oliver frommel replied:
&gt; many software developers I know have right-wing libertarian views.

And I'm sure there are many open source developers who are totally
apolitical....

What I'm trying to understand is this: Does the shift from an impersonal
commodity to a personal service relationship (on the economic level)
combined with an abundant pool of resources and a task so complex that it
is managed most effectively in a collaborative way, does this to some
degree mitigate otherwise competing interests between the 'self' and the
'community'?

It is certainly not a given, but perhaps the open source experience shows a
way into this direction.

Felix

--------------------++-----
Les faits sont faits.
http://felix.openflows.org</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.10</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Tue, 18 Dec 2001 21:18:09 +0100</date>
<content>Am Mon, 17.Dec.2001 um 02:59:32 -0500 schrieb jaromil:
 
&gt; By reading David Lancashire's article and by following this thread i
&gt; still don't understand if you're voluntarily blurring differences
&gt; between "free software" and "open source" or you are simply ignorant:

Yes, it is indeed disappointed that a term that was (quite consciously)
coined as a depoliticized new economy marketing buzzword for Free
Software has so widely been adopted in "critical" net cultures. 

The "Open Source FAQ" of the Open Source Initiave says:

   The Open Source Initiative is a marketing program for free software.
   It's a pitch for "free software" on solid pragmatic grounds rather
   than ideological tub-thumping. 
&lt;http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/faq.html&gt;   
 
&gt; Once cleared such a crucial difference for the discussion i'd like to
&gt; add my point of view about free software: _it is_ altruism, it has a

In fact, I argued along similar lines in my initial response because I
had jaromil - a great hacker, btw. - in my mind, regardless the fact
that much if not all Free Software development is coupled with
commercial software enterprise or side-projects. The real amount of
altruism in Free Software development may be debated, but any programmer
who's mostly or even only in it for the money would be stupid to program
anything but proprietary software (which, no doubt, is more profitable).

Florian

-- 
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html
GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.11</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Re: &lt;nettime&gt; The Fading Altruism of Open Source Developmen</subject>
<from>Felix Stalder</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Tue, 18 Dec 2001 21:14:11 -0500</date>
<content>&gt;&gt; By reading David Lancashire's article and by following this thread i
&gt;&gt; still don't understand if you're voluntarily blurring differences
&gt;&gt; between "free software" and "open source" or you are simply ignorant:
&gt;
&gt;Yes, it is indeed disappointed that a term that was (quite consciously)
&gt;coined as a depoliticized new economy marketing buzzword for Free Software
&gt;has so widely been adopted in "critical" net cultures.

I quite deliberately (con)fuse the two, though I'm sure I'm also ignorant.
I think separating now FSF/GNU and Open Source/Linux is like trying to
separate the ingredients of a meal after it has been cooked. It's pretty
pointless. It's clear that Linux and other Open Source projects heavily
built on FSF work, however, I think it's also clear that without Linux (and
other projects) the great FSF would have remained a rather closed, albeit
pure, medium-sized club.

One of the most interesting aspects in this entire movement is the degree
to which it has been able to absorb very different, even contradictory
ideas. Any attempt to purify this heterogeneous beast (to use a
semi-Latourian term) is pedantic at best, destructive at worst.

So far, I think the politics are still in the code, not in the label, and I
cannot see much difference between Open Source/Linux GPL code and FSP GPL
code. But then again, I'm not a hacker.

&gt; but any programmer who's mostly or even only
&gt;in it for the money would be stupid to program anything but proprietary
&gt;software (which, no doubt, is more profitable).

Which is not necessarily true. I guess John Gilmore is still quite wealthy
(good for the EFF).  However, this is totally besides the point. Whether
someone makes money or not is not really the question, the question is the
quality of the output  and its impact on others. The rest, from my point of
view, is a life-style question.

Felix

--------------------++-----
Les faits sont faits.
http://felix.openflows.org</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>6.0</nbr>
<subject>[Nettime-bold] Free Software and the lack of cool artists and philosophers</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-bold@nettime.org</to>
<date>Thu, 6 Dec 2001 13:14:03 +0100</date>
<content>&gt;From Martin Schulze's writeup of the 8th Linux Kongress:

[Note: The Linux Kongress which this year took place in
Enschede/Netherlands is the traditional, hardcore-technical meeting of
Linux system developers. - Martin "Joey" Schulze is an important
developer of Debian GNU/Linux and guru in #LinuxGER (IRCNet) and #Debian
(LISC).  -FC]

&gt; Also, interesting discussions about Free Software versus proprietery
&gt; Software came up ending in the question "Does Free Software actually
&gt; use its power to come up with impressingly new ideas and use the
&gt; freedom to implement and try them?"(*) An amazing (or depressing, for
&gt; what it's worth) number of Free Software Projects target at
&gt; reimplementing software that is already known in the commercial and
&gt; proprietary market.
&gt; 
&gt; Since Free Software isn't bound to marketing droids and company bosses
&gt; dictating the goals and features of a particular software, it should
&gt; be perfectly suited to implement new ideas and come up with drastical
&gt; changes.  However, looking at many Free Software projects this doesn't
&gt; seem to be the case. New questions came ub as: Why are companies
&gt; required to come up with new ideas so often? Why are special design
&gt; centers needed for a new GUI to appear? Maybe the Free Software
&gt; Community lacks a number of cool artists and philosophers?

[...]

&gt; (*) Some new ideas that were invented through Free Software include
&gt; BIND (internet nameserver, without it, the internet wouldn't be able
&gt; to exist), c-news and INN (Usenet news servers, electronic bulletin
&gt; boards etc.), themes (themable widget libraries, think of Gnome and
&gt; KDE), Enlightenment (even though some people may miss some
&gt; functionality, but it's look is definitively new), X11 (the ability to
&gt; export displays over the network), xiafs (who of you does remember the
&gt; filesystem Frank Xia designed?), HTML (of course, crediting Tim
&gt; Berners-Lee), Emacs (ever saw a lisp interpreter that can actually
&gt; edit files? Lacks a decent editor, but hey...), Languages like Perl,
&gt; Python and Ruby.

[Full text at
&lt;http://www.infodrom.org/Debian/events/LinuxKongress2001/report.html&gt;]

Florian

-- 
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html
GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; gentrification of hacking</subject>
<from>biella</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Sat, 15 Aug 2015 12:16:23 +0200</date>
<content>Hi,

I want to chime in but can only do so briefly as I am at CCC camp and
not online much. I found the essay provocative and it is undeniable that
these processes are under way but two things come to mind: this cycle has
long existed and in many quarters of the hacker community from the
security industry to hardware (the Homebrew club went from an informal
association of hackers building association to a capitalist gold mine).
These processes are deeply cyclical and on going and I don't really
expect them to go away given how central computing is to capitalism.

What was ommitted was the rather expanisive politicization of hacking we
have witnessed in the last five years thanks to the likes of Wikileaks
and Anonymous (or as Julian Assange put it " The political education of
apolitical technical people is extraordinary.") This is not to say we
should not worry about cooptation/gentrification/recuperation. But it is
as important to understand what has helped secure this flowering of
political activisity today so that we can protect it in the future.

I wrote a paper, Weapons of the Geek about the political turn in
hacking. It is under review but am happy to share for those who want to
see an early copy. I am also pasting a section of the introduction below.

Biella

Even as they attain to a social primacy alongside the global
communications technologies they have helped steward, entrenched
stereotypes have precluded serious studies of the contemporary politics
of hacking. Peering past the caricatures, we can see that hackers have
long used their skills for protest and overt political transformation
(Jordan and Taylor 2004). Hacking itself has long exhibited a powerful,
albeit latent, political sub-text (Soderberg 2012; Wark 2004).But in the
past five years, activist-motivated hacking has significantly enlarged
its scope and continues to demonstrate nuanced and diverse ideological
commitments. Many of these commitments cannot be reduced to
"libertarianism," that ideology universalized by many observers as the
crux of hacker politics. For one, civil disobedience has surged in a
varietyof formats and styles, often in relation to leaks and
exfiltration. We see lone leakers, like Chelsea Manning, and also
collectivist and leftist leaking endeavors, perhaps best exemplified by
Xnet in Spain. Other political engagements, similarly irreducible to
libertarian values alone, center around collective engagements at the
level of software: hackers have recently coded up protocols (like
BitTorrent) andtechnical platforms (like The Pirate Bay) to enable
peer-to-peer file sharing and anti-copyright piracy (Beyer 2014;
McKelvey, forthcoming); sincethe 1980s, free software hackers have
embedded their collectively produced programs with legal
stipulationsthat have powerfully tilted the politics of intellectual
property law in favor of access (Kelty 2008; Coleman 2013);
AcrossEurope, Latin America,and the United States, anti-capitalist
hackers run small but well-functioning collectives that
offerprivacy-enhancing technical support and services for leftist
crusaders;Anonymous, a worldwide protest ensemble specializing in
digital direct dissent, has established itself asone of the most
populist manifestations of contemporary geek politics -- requiring no
technical skills to contribute (Coleman 2014); and finally,on the more
liberal front, civic and open government hackers throughout North and
South Americahave sought to improve government transparency by creating
open standards andapplications thatfacilitate data access and sharing
(Gregg and DiSalvo 2013; Schrock, forthcoming). Julian Assange, one of
the most prominent activist hackers, has recently highlighted the rather
dramatic turn to activism and political engagement among geeky
technologists. "The political education of apolitical technical people
is extraordinary" (2014: 116), he noted during an interview.

There are no obvious, much less given, explanations as to why a group
once primarily defined by obscure tinkering and technical exploration
now engages so frequently in popular media advocacy, traditional policy
and lawmaking, and activism -- including forms of civil disobedience so
risky that some in the community are currently in prison or living in
exile.Working technologists are economically rewarded in*s*tep
withdoctors,lawyers,and academics -- and yet these professions produce far
fewer politically-active practitioners. Why and how have hackers who
enjoy a significant degree of social and economic privilege managed to
preserve pockets of autonomy? What historical, cultural, and
sociological conditions have facilitated their passage into the
political arena, especially in such large numbers? This does not mean
hackers should be blindly celebrated or denigrated, (as has often been
the case in the popular literature on hackers),but it does beg for
analysis andexplanation.

Ideally, thebeginnings of an answerwould deeply charthacker activity
along two distinct vectors: thehistoricalandthe socio-cultural.
However,an article of this lengthaffords only a single thread of
analysis. While my article will gesture at historical events and
circumstances, this article will foremost provide an introductory
inventorya basic outline of an explanation -- of thesociological and
cultural attributes most likely responsiblefor the unprecedented and
multitudinous intensification ofhacker politics duringthe last five
years. To begin, let's consider the idea of the "hacker" itself.
     Dear Brett,

     your essay is brilliant and obvious at the same time. I did enjoy
     reading it, but still feels like scratching the surface as it does not
     dig into other historical examples of cultural gentrification.
      &lt;...&gt;</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; gentrification of hacking</subject>
<from>Brett Scott</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:58:32 +0200</date>
<content>Thanks Biella,

You're much more of an expert on this than I am, so it's good to see
this. My main objective was to stir up debate a bit to keep people on
their toes, rather than necessarily believing in the 'death of the
hacker'. A lot of my writing has an ambiguous relationship to factual
reality, or I often deliberately mix together descriptive accounts of
things with normative accounts of things I'd like to see, and
sometimes they blend into one... well, perhaps this is a way of saying
that I am less an academic than I am a shit-stirrer, and sometimes I
will make things cruder than they actually are in order to push a
political agenda. I want the politicization to continue, and pointing
out the forces against politicization is one way I do that. Hope this
makes sense

Looking forward to seeing Weapons of the Geek when it comes out!

Hope CCC camp is fun
Cheers!
Brett
 {AT} suitpossum

   On 15/08/2015 12:16, biella wrote:

Hi,

I want to chime in but can only do so briefly as I am at CCC camp and
not online much. I found the essay provocative and it is undeniable that
these processes are under way but two things come to mind: this cycle has
long existed and in many quarters of the hacker community from the
security industry to hardware (the Homebrew club went from an informal
association of hackers building association to a capitalist gold mine).
These processes are deeply cyclical and on going and I don't really
expect them to go away given how central computing is to capitalism.
 &lt;...&gt;</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; gentrification of hacking</subject>
<from>John Young</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Sun, 16 Aug 2015 15:40:24 -0400</date>
<content>Gentrification of hacking is by those studying, reporting, historicizing,
philosophizing, theorizing, aestheticing, curating (spit) it. As with
gentrification in general, it reifies the reification, a deft academic
opportunism, one might be so vulgar as to say the very product of
nettime and every growing crowd of cohorts. Amazon-ian in intent.

Gentrifiers dare not hack, but do inveigle their way into hacker havens,
publish about hackers, testify against hackers, consult with governments
about hackers, speechify hackerdom at security fora, advise film and
media about hackers, produce hacker-derived aesthetic objects, even
advise crude and obnoxious hackers about advancing careers as
hacker, ex-hacker, hacker informer, undercover cop, covert agent
academic with hacker cred, and if all goes well sign on to distinguished
institutions, cybersecurity corporations, and duplicitous NGOs like
In-tel-Q where PhDs are taxidermied for showboating at DefCons
and CCCs, then on to global appearances via speaker bureaus
and paid conferences,

Gentrifiers are allegeric to jail themselves but do exploit the few
hackers who get nabbed through the assistance provided to
law enforcement by gentrifiers, not least by celebrifying hackers
so that officials are induced to go after them for budget enhancement.

So goes gentrification in all its vile piggish manifestations. Behold the
origin of the term to cloak, deceive, defuse dissent, advance the
interests of property holders. White hat hacker cartels are making
a killling policing gentrification cyber real estate.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.3</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; gentrification of hacking</subject>
<from>Gabriella \"Biella\" Coleman</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Mon, 24 Aug 2015 09:03:59 -0700</date>
<content>
 Hi,

Sorry for the delay. Post camp life turned out to be far more
complicated than expected but I managed to cobble together a bit of a
short reply below.. But given how these discussions tend to metabolize
rather rapidly, I realize I might be too late.

On 15-08-17 06:00 AM, [1]nettime-l-request {AT} mail.kein.org wrote:


Message: 1
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:58:32 +0200
From: Brett Scott [2]&lt;b.r.scott.06 {AT} cantab.net&gt;
To: [3]nettime-l {AT} kein.org
Subject: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; gentrification of hacking
Message-ID: [4]&lt;mailman.6.1439805601.55365.nettime-l {AT} mail.kein.org&gt;
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Thanks Biella,

You're much more of an expert on this than I am, so it's good to see
this. My main objective was to stir up debate a bit to keep people on
their toes, rather than necessarily believing in the 'death of the
hacker'. A lot of my writing has an ambiguous relationship to factual
reality, or I often deliberately mix together descriptive accounts of
things with normative accounts of things I'd like to see, and
sometimes they blend into one... well, perhaps this is a way of saying
that I am less an academic than I am a shit-stirrer, and sometimes I
will make things cruder than they actually are in order to push a
political agenda. I want the politicization to continue, and pointing
out the forces against politicization is one way I do that. Hope this
makes sense



   It does, to a point. We clearly reside in the same camp: we want to
   encourage the processes of radicalization among the technorati. And
   your piece is provocative enough (and written well enough) so that
   people read it in large numbers and it ricocheted far and wide across
   many sites. You did stir the pot of conversation, which is a really
   good thing.
   Still as already stated, my worry, which is less academic and more
   pragmatic, concerns precisely how to most productively push a political
   agenda. The window of activist activity we are witnessing is both
   remarkable (and remarkably robust) but completely fragile--and again
   precisely due to the economic dynamics you lay out. Your piece may have
   identified a problem (one again that is more cyclical, and on going
   than new) but it also missed an opportunity to nudge those who harbor a
   political/activist sensibility toward the site of struggle. These are
   exciting times precisely because there is rich and active terrain of
   struggle with large numbers of hackers and geeks willing to enter fully
   into the political arena. A number of folks tweeting your piece made it
   seem like there was once possibilities and now they have have slipped
   through our fingers. That is a dangerous (and empirically wrong
   message) to send to the public at large.
   There is no need to belabor the point but I guess I raise it a final
   time for the sake of future writings. I just think you could have been
   more effective--as a shit-stirring provocateur--had you loudly and
   proudly pointed to those who have decided not to accept the path of
   gentrification for the sake of a better world so that others with a
   activist sensibility could join they rabble rousing party ;)

   Take care,
   Biella

Biella	
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.4</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; gentrification of hacking</subject>
<from>John Hopkins</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Mon, 24 Aug 2015 10:57:58 -0700</date>
<content>Biella --

some musings on your note:</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.5</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; gentrification of hacking</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Wed, 26 Aug 2015 15:42:03 +0200</date>
<content>When Stephen Levy wrote "Hackers" in 1984, his description of hacker
   culture and his write-up of the hacker ethic were, to a considerable
   part, based on Richard Stallman. Already in that year, Levy called
   Stallman the "last of the true hackers". Stallman created the GNU
   Project in the same year out of frustration of what had become - or how
   little had remained - of the original M.I.T. hacker culture. Even the
   GNU Project itself involves "gentrification" in the sense that
   development of some of its subprojects (such as the GNU C Compiler, the
   GNU C Library and the GNOME desktop) has become largely corporate. GNU
   intentionally never imposed prohibitions on commercial and particular
   political/military uses of software licensed under its terms. This
   position continues to be criticized by other hackers, for example by
   Felix von Leitner from Chaos Computer Club.
   All this suggests that the "gentrification of hacking" is not a new
   phenomenon, but that it has been a part of hacker culture since its
   early days.
   -F</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.6</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; gentrification of hacking</subject>
<from>Erich M.</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Thu, 27 Aug 2015 02:11:17 +0200</date>
<content>
On 2015-08-26 15:42, Florian Cramer wrote:

&gt;    When Stephen Levy wrote "Hackers" in 1984, his description of hacker
&gt;    culture and his write-up of the hacker ethic were, to a considerable
&gt;    part, based on Richard Stallman. 

Right. And these hacker ethics are derived from the "ham spirit" of the
early 1920ies. That was right after the first ever machine centric war
"Gentrifiction?". Ladies and gents of nettime-list are you for real?
cccamp2015 was like an amateur radio fieldday, but futuristic and
steampunk as well.
Can you imagine a five days outdoor event of 4.800 people in the midst
of nowhere without any blue lights or uniforms ever visible? No fights
none stone drunk, nothing. But 40 GBit local, 10 GBit uplink. 8 GSM
stations, own SIMs, 2.700 fones on the DECT wireless network, all
interconnected. Not to forget the military field 4 KM telephone system
and the ham UHF repeater station. The latter technologies were really in
use, when the nets were run down and +2000 people had to be evacuated
temporarily because all these high tents, antenna masts were not
grounded adequatly any more. 5 days of 37 C and a sandy ground,
surrounded by water. An evil high power capacitor eye in the landscape
facing a another pole in the troposphere potentially VERY evil..
Here is a report what happened...

http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1761897/

This is all not about gentrification which is a ridiculously useless
because purely ideologic term btw.
cccamps have always been the breeding ground for projects presented at
congress thereafter.
You could not distinguish between hackers, hams or makers. Rather young
families, even singles or pairs in their 50ies or 60ies.
Wait what? gentrification? What about adding some field research to your
free flow of hypotheses?
73 de Erich M. OE3EMB

Post/scrypt: Jaromil, where the fuq are you when you are needed in a
discussion? LOL

 &lt;...&gt;

-- 

https://moechel.com/kontakt        PGP KEY 0x2440DE65
fingerprint A564 1457 71C3 E907 6D78 429E 76F3 C66E 2440 DE65
--... ...--   -.. .   . .-. .. -.-. ....   --- . ...-- . -- -...	
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.7</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; gentrification of hacking</subject>
<from>Antonio</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Thu, 27 Aug 2015 03:04:55 +0200</date>
<content>I am sure that many of your already read these articles or they know
   them by heart

   Nonetheless I feel like refreshing your memory:

   http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-3-free-software-epistemics/peer-reviewed-papers/free-software-trajectories-from-organized-publics-to-formal-social-enterprises/

   http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-3-free-software-epistemics/debate/there-is-no-free-software/

   Also, since "gentrification" is the key issue in here, I would like to
   quote this passage from Blake in his review of Richard Smith (2003)
   work which I think could fit the ongoing discussion:Â

   "In actuality, networks may contain ubiquitous actants occupying fluid
   positions, who like Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) 'journeymen' and
   'monsters' operate in relation to mechanisms of control but also retain
   lines of escape of their own. This can be illustrated by Neil Smith's
   (1992) analysis of the position of artists in the gentrification
   process. In the Lower East Side artists can be seen to have a
   meditating influence in gentrification, since low rents and government
   subsidy may attract them to an areas, raising its cultural image enough
   to attract gentrification. Nevertheless they have a ubiquitous role in
   this process, since rising prices may finally push many artists out of
   the neighbourhoods and some may therefore support activities from
   original residents resisting gentrification. At the same time however,
   artists may benefit from new markets created by the gentrifiers,
   leading to the presence of oppositional art in mainstream galleries. In
   this sense artists can be seen to occupy a fluid position in the
   networks linking gentrifiers with the established community. Thus they
   may be seen as an example of the non-conforming identities described by
   Star (1991: 39), in that they operate "between the categories, yet in
   relationship to them"."

   a.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.0</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; [Fwd: Re: [ox-en] Felix Stalder: Six Limitations to the Current Open Source Development Methodology]</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 2 Sep 2003 17:06:03 +0200</date>
<content>Am Dienstag, 26. August 2003 um 17:07:02 Uhr (+0200) schrieb Felix
Stalder:
 
&gt; These limitations refer to the kind of problems that can be addressed
&gt; through the current form of social organization developed in the Open
&gt; Source Movement. The way Open Source Projects are organized reflects
&gt; the specifics of problem -- developing software -- and thus they
&gt; cannot serve as a model to address problem with very different
&gt; characteristics.
&gt; 
&gt; This does not mean that other problems, for example, the development
&gt; of drugs, cannot be organized in an open way, but this 'open way' will
&gt; have to look very different from the way Open Source Software projects
&gt; are organized because the problem of creating drugs is very different
&gt; from the problem of creating software. In other words, there is an
&gt; intimate relationship between the characteristics of the problem and
&gt; the social organization of its solution.

A good example are "Open Content" licenses. They have departed
significantly from Free Software/Open Source licenses wherever they allow
to restrict modification and commercial distribution of a work. Therefore,
the two major "Open Content" licenses, the GNU Free Documentation License
(used by, among others, the Wikipedia) and the Open Publication License,
are non-free or non-Open Source. As a consequence, the Debian project
recently considered moving software documentation released under the GNU
GDL into its non-free section. - The same is true, btw., for the 12
licenses "Creative Commons" &lt;http://www.creativecommons.org&gt; offers of
which only 4 qualify as "Free" or "Open Source" according to the Debian
Free Software Guidelines and the Open Source Definition. If "Open Content"
needs other legal regulations than Free Software, then obviously because
of the different social issues of writing, for example, books as opposed
to writing software. (Which doesn't mean that these fields couldn't
converge very soon - for example through the need for authors to write
complex XML markup, use revision control and content management systems
etc., so that the traditional distinction will get more and more blurred.)

Nevertheless, this is a good opportunity to question the venerable
copyright statement of Nettime:

"distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;: no commercial use without permission".

In order to turn Nettime into a truly public and free resource, I suggest
to change this line into

"distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;; unless stated otherwise by the author,
permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1"
-F
-- 
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html
GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA, finger cantsin {AT} mail.zedat.fu-berlin.de</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>9.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Free Software as Collaborative Tex</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 19 Sep 2000 11:39:31 +0200</date>
<content>(This is the manuscript of a lecture I held on the panel "Minor Media
Operations" at the Interface 5 conference in Hamburg. I hope it's of some
interest to Nettime subscribers. The text is also available in PDF and
html format from my homepage &lt;http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin&gt; -FC)
                Free Software as Collaborative Text
                                  
                           Florian Cramer
                     &lt;cantsin {AT} zedat.fu-berlin.de&gt;
                                  
                        September 15, 2000 [1]
                                  
   
What is Free Software?

  Why discuss Free Software in the context of net arts and net
  cultures?
  
   Since about two years, Free Software--or "Open Source"--has
   drawn increasing attention from artistic net cultures. The
   Wizards of OS conference, first held in Berlin in 1999, was
   the most prolific event to bridge the gap between the arts,
   humanities and social sciences on the one hand and Free
   Software culture on the other. The politics of copyleft and
   free distribution of code and knowledge soon turned out to be
   a common ground of discourse. In this paper, I will take a
   different aspect into consideration by reading Free Software
   as a net culture and its code as a multi-layered,
   collaborative text. Seen as a literary practice, Free Software
   development is an avant-garde of writing in digital networks,
   and even more: Since Free Software is at the heart of the
   technical infrastructure of the Internet, it has--to a large
   extent--written its own digital network.
   
  Definition of Free Software
  
   In this paper, "Free Software" does not refer to
   "Freeware", "Shareware" or other proprietary software
   given away at no cost--like Microsoft Internet Explorer,
   QuickTime and Real Player--, but is understood in accordance
   with the definitions of Free Software Foundation
   http://www.fsf.org as software which is "free as free speech,
   not as free beer". Among the best-known examples of Free
   Software are the Linux kernel, the GNU tools and the Apache
   web server.
   
   Since 1998, the term "Free Software" competes with "Open
   Source", a term launched by a group around the writer and
   programmer Eric S. Raymond. According to this group, "Open
   Source" is only a different name for the same thing to gain
   more mainstream acceptance in the world of computing.[2] The
   Open Source Definition [Opeb] therefore draws upon the older
   Free Software Guidelines [Deb] of Debian, a non-commercial
   GNU/Linux distribution made by volunteers.[3] The guidelines 
   can be summarized as follows:
   
    1. Free Software may be freely copied.
    2. Not only the executable binary code, but also the program
       source code are freely available.
    3. The source code may be modified and used for other
       programs by anyone.
    4. There are no restrictions on the use of Free Software.
       Even if Free Software is used for commercial purposes, no
       license fees have to be paid.
    5. There are no restrictions on the distribution of Free
       Software. Free Software may be sold for money even without
       paying the programmers.
       
   Since the same criteria apply to "Open Source", the two
   concepts indeed do not differ in technical terms. Yet each of
   both terms has its ambiguities: While "Free Software" tends
   to get confused with Freeware and Shareware,[4] "Open Source"
   is easy to be mixed up with "open standards"--like the HTML
   format and the http protocol--and with software like Sun's Java
   whose source code is publicly available, but only under a
   restrictive license. It is particularly important to
   differentiate "Open Source" and "Free Software" from open
   standards. While open standards are unified technical
   specifications set up by committees like the Internet
   Engineering Taskforce (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium
   (W3C), "Open Source" or "Free Software" developers code
   whatever they like for their own fun, and they are free to
   split their projects and develop the code into separate
   directions if a consensus can no longer be reached.[5]
   
   Since misconceptions of "Open Source" are so common, I will
   stick with the less popular, but somewhat clearer term "Free
   Software".
   
  Free Software History
  
   It is not accidental that history of Free Software runs
   parallel to the history of the Internet. The Internet is built
   on Unix networking technology. Unix used to be free for
   academic institutions in the 1970s, and it has been either the
   base or model of the common Free Software operating systems
   BSD and GNU/Linux.
   
   Any ordinary E-Mail message still reveals the affinity of the
   Internet and Unix technology: E-Mail itself is nothing but the
   Unix mail command. An E-Mail address of the form xy {AT} z.com is
   made up of what's historically a user name on a multiuser Unix
   system and, following the " {AT} ", the system's host name. This
   host name is resolved via the free Unix software bind
   according to the Internet domain name system (DNS); DNS itself
   is nothing but a networked extension of the Unix system file
   /etc/hosts. Since the Internet has marginalized or even
   replaced proprietary computer networks like IBM's EARN/Bitnet,
   Compuserve, the German Btx and the French Minitel, Unix
   networking technology is standard on all computing platforms.
   
   In the 1970, Unix particularly attracted student hacker
   communities at the MIT and at the University of California at
   Berkeley. The concepts of open, decentralized computer
   networks and free Unix-like operating systems originated in 
   the computer science labs of these institutions. By
   the early 1990s, the "hacker" software written there had
   evolved into
   
    1. the BSD family of operating systems with the free versions
       FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. All of them use a codebase
       that was originally developed in Berkeley under the
       project leadership of Bill Joy.

    2. the GNU/Linux operating system. All major Linux-based
       operating system distributions--RedHat Linux, SuSE Linux,
       Turbo Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, Mandrake Linux, Corel Linux
       OS and Caldera OpenLinux, to name only a few--build on the
       GNU software written since 1984 by the Free Software
       Foundation (FSF) and on the Linux kernel written since
       1991 under the project leadership of Linus Torvalds.[6] 
       The FSF was founded and is still being led by former MIT
       hacker Richard M. Stallman.
       
   Open technology has been a key factor for the acceptance of
   computers and networking: The open architecture of the IBM
   Personal Computer made computers cheap and popular since the
   1980s, and with the open architecture of the Internet,
   networking became popular in the early 1990s. Lately, Free
   Software has made high-end Unix server computing available to
   anyone willing to learn the technical details. Whether Free
   Software can become as popular on mainstream desktop computers
   and eventually de-commoditize all computer software, remains
   to be seen, but is not the question I want to investigate
   here.
   
Free Software as a Net Culture

   In the middle of the 1990s, "net culture" became the keyword
   for artistic, art-critical and political discourse in the
   Internet. The term was closely identified with mailing lists
   like Nettime http://www.nettime.org and Rhizome
   http://www.rhizome.org, conferences like the one where I
   present this paper and print publications like the Nettime
   anthology [BMBB^+99]. "Net culture" used to be pronounced as
   a singular noun in these forums and media referring only to
   the discourse they created.
   
   Free Software is an outstanding example that there is not one,
   but many net cultures. It predates artistic net cultures in
   the Internet by roughly twenty years. The Free Software
   copyleft can be seen as the quintessential reflection of this
   long experience. Invented to preserve the traditional
   academic-artistic freedom of speech and citation in the
   digital realm, the copyleft has radically rewritten it
   nevertheless. The concept that code, i.e. text, may not only
   be freely copied, but even modified ("patched"), willfully
   recycled and commercially redistributed by anyone without the
   author's permit is foreign to the post-medieval Western arts
   and sciences. In print culture, such practices are considered
   plagiarism and theft.
   
   Even for the digital net arts, the copyleft remains an
   unresolved challenge. Many, if not most net artworks depend on
   proprietary authoring and display software,[7] and the
   distribution terms of their code are rarely clarified.[8] Yet
   Free Software has as subtly as significantly influenced the
   digitally networked arts. Without free E-mail server software
   like Majordomo http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/ and
   Sendmail http://www.sendmail.org--and the overall possibility 
   to set up inexpensive servers using the GNU/Linux and BSD
   operating systems on stock PC hardware--, the artistic net
   cultures of Nettime et.al. hardly could have operated
   non-commercially and with free participation.[9] Friedrich
   Kittler's observation that artistic tools conceptually shape
   what is made with them [Kit85] also applies to the net arts.
   The fact that Majordomo and Sendmail became major tools of
   artistic net activity is an important--but of course not the
   sole--explanation why contemporary Net.art tends towards
   conceptual, discursive and text-heavy work instead of the
   immersive "virtual reality" environments many critics had
   expected them to deliver. The latter would have required
   expensive proprietary software for design and display, closed
   high-speed networks and, as a result, dependence on highly
   funded institutional infrastructures, limited community
   participation and top-down instead of bottom-up organization
   of this particular net culture.
   
Free Software as Writing

   The relevance of Free Software for other net cultures is not
   limited to the tools it has created and the infrastructures it
   has made possible, simply because those tools themselves are
   the very object of Free Software culture: they are text,
   results of complex textual processing. Moreover, this text is
   being produced with tools which themselves are free code.
   
   While the phenomenon that text is being built with tools which
   are source text themselves applies to the proprietary software
   as well, there is an important difference: Free Software
   source text is not withdrawn from the public. It cannot be
   abandoned by company management and does not disappear when
   development has ceased. All Free Software builds up to a
   public repository of text-coded, free-to-use knowledge. It
   accumulates to an archive. Instead of being written from
   scratch, new Free Software can be built from whatsoever is in
   that archive. Free Software therefore is highly intertextual.
   Free Software development is the earliest and still most
   successful practice of collaborative writing in computer
   networks. With its system of textual production and politics
   of code, Free Software is by far the more advanced net
   literature than what is commonly understood as net poetry and
   net fiction.[10] Free Software may be seen simultaneously as
   
     * a freely accessible, ever-growing body of code--a text
       archive;
     * recursive (i.e. self-applied) text processing, since
       available text is used both as a source and as a building
       tool to create new code;
     * text processing even through the medium of text, because
       Free Software development infrastructures mostly depend on
       mailing lists and command-based version control systems.
     * a "hacker" culture which advocates freedom of
       information and codes its politics into the legal texts of
       the copyleft.
       
   The coded copyleft might be the clearest interstice between
   Free Software as a net culture and Free Software as net text.
   Both these aspects already come into play when Free Software
   is being written. Free Software development is typically
   achieved by self-organized volunteer projects whose members
   communicate and collaborate via the Internet. The development
   work consists of:
   
    1. Writing program source text
       This involves evaluting of available Free Software source
       code for possible inclusion and adaption. It also involves
       picking--and compiling--the coding tools which themselves
       are Free Software source text.
       To accomodate its own needs, Free Software has developed
       the arguably most sophisticated writing tools for the
       distributed authoring of text. Particularly outstanding is
       the Concurrent Versioning System (CVS) [Ced99] which
       allows authors to take portions of text--regardless whether
       it is written in programming language or in natural
       language--over the Internet, work on them at home, and
       synchronize the changes with the revisions of other
       collaborators any time. CVS-based writing might be the
       technically most radical departure from the
       typewriter-and-mail paradigm in text editing to date.
    2. Writing documentation text
       Documentation is both internal and external to the program
       source text when the latter contains annotations and
       separate reference documentation is being written.
       Free manuals remain a political issue within Free Software
       development. A number of companies base their business
       model on giving away the software under free licenses and
       charging for documentation and support.[11] In the ideal
       case however, a second textual recursion occurs within in
       Free Software which is common in all modern knowledge
       systems since Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie:[12]
       The text teaches the reader all steps which were necessary
       for its creation so that all the information it contains
       may be re-applied to itself.
    3. Communication over mailing lists, bugtracking systems and
       IRC
       Free Software development teams almost exclusively
       constitute themselves and communicate over the Internet,
       in mailing lists and on IRC servers. Interpersonal
       communication therefore is a third layer of text which
       regulates the design of both program and documentation
       source text. It operates as a cybernetic feedback loop for
       the development process.
    4. Writing legal text
       Free Software is legally defined. It is software under
       certain licenses, i.e. legal documents. The most common
       types of copyleft include the GNU General Public License
       http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html, the BSD License and
       the Perl Artistic License. Whether program source text is
       free solely depends on whether it is copylefted. Legal
       text therefore is the fourth layer of text regulating the
       entire flow of text generated in Free Software projects.
       
   Free Software is thus a highly sophisticated system of
   recursive text generation for a public pool of knowledge. It
   is text code created from text code with text-coded tools and
   textual communication over networks. The types of texts
   processed in Free Software are extremely diverse: They include
   executable binaries,[13] text written in programming languages,
   text written in natural languages for documentation, text
   written in natural languages for communicating and steering
   development, and legal texts defining the fair-play rules of
   the recursive textual processing.
   
Objections

   Both the Free Software engineering and the net artistic camps
   are traditionally skeptical about attempts to read Free
   Software in terms of the net arts. The objections were
   particularly voiced when the Linux kernel was awarded the
   Golden Nica in the "net" category of Ars Electronica 1999.
   At the Wizards of OS conference in the same year, the net
   artist Alexej Shulgin argued that Free Software is
   "functional" while Net.art is "non-functional",
   self-sufficient code.[14]
   
   I do not find this point viable from an analytical
   perspective, since the division between "functional" and
   "non-functional" is purely arbitrary and subjective. I/O/D's
   Web Stalker [I/O97], an experimental Web browser and
   well-known Net.art work, is arguably more "functional" than
   the teddy bear desktop emblem xteddy which is contained in all
   major GNU/Linux distributions. Moreover, the dinstiction
   between "functional" Free Software and "non-functional"
   Net.art falls back into late-romanticist notions of the
   absolute artwork versus lower craftsmanship. It also neglects
   that with its multiple self-applications of text, the
   development and use of Free Software is to a large extent its
   own purpose. No other operating system is as open and
   seductive to be used as an end to itself as GNU/Linux.
   
   Just as arbitrary as the distinction between "functional"
   and "non-functional" software is that between program source
   code and poetry. To date, all attempts to formally define
   poetry and poetic language have failed. The decision whether a
   text is poetry will always be up to the reader. The notion of
   "program code" versus "poetry" was first put into question
   by the French poet and mathematician François le Lionnais, who
   co-founded the Oulipo group with Raymond Queneau. In 1973, le
   Lionnais released a volume of poetry written in the
   programming language Algol. The practice has been revived in
   the 1990s by people who write poems in the Perl scripting
   language.
   
Conclusion

   Read as a net literature and a net culture, Free Software is a
   highly sophisticated system of self-applied text and social
   interactions. No other net culture has invented its computer
   code as thoroughly, and no other net culture has acquired a
   similar awareness of the culture and politics of the digital
   text.
   
   Much Net.art, net literature and critical discourse about them
   has focused on the aesthetics and politics of desktop user
   interfaces. In its focus on code, Free Software shows that net
   cultures are about more than just what is between people and
   the network. To date, it remains a rare example of electronic
   literature which does not confuse the Internet with web
   browsers.
   
   (Acknowledgement: This paper was written using the Free
   Software programs LyX, LaTeX, bibtex, bibtools, pdflatex,
   latex2html, lynx, XEmacs and GNU Ghostscript on an office and
   a home PC running Debian GNU/Linux with reiserfs, XFree86 and
   larswm.)
   
References

   [BMBB^+99]
          Josephine Bosma, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Ted
          Byfield, Matthew Fuller, Geert Lovink, Diana McCarthy,
          Pit Schultz, Felix Stalder, McKenzie Wark, and Faith
          Wilding, editors. Readme! Filtered by Nettime.
          Autonomedia, Brooklyn, 1999.
   [Bos98]
          Josephine Bosma. Is It a Commercial? Nooo... Is It
          Spam? ... Nooo - It's Net Art. Mute, 10:73-74, 1998.
   [Ced99]
          Per Cederqvist. Version Management with CVS. Signum
          Support AB, Link oping, 1992-1999.
          http://www.lorai.fr/~molli/cvs-index.html.
   [Cra00]
          Florian Cramer. Warum es zuwenig interessante
          Netzdichtung gibt: Neun Thesen, 2000.
          http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/aufsaetze/netzlit
          eratur/karlsruher_thesen.pdf.
   [Deb]
          Debian Project. The Debian Free Software Guidelines.
          http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html
   [Hof99]
          Jeanette Hofmann. Der Erfolg offener Standards und
          seine Nebenwirkungen. Telepolis, 7 1999.
          http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/wos/6453/1.html.
   [I/O97]
          I/O/D. I/O/D 4: The Web Stalker, 1997.
          http://bak.spc.org/iod/.
   [Kit85]
          Friedrich Kittler. Aufschreibesysteme 1800 1900. Fink,
          München, 1985.
   [Opea]
          The Open Source Initiative. Frequently asked questions
          about open source. http://www.opensource.org/faq.html.
   [Opeb]
          The Open Source Initiative. Open Source Definition.
          http://www.opensource.org/osd.html.
     _________________________________________________________
   
  Footnotes:
  
   1 This paper was presented at the conference Interface 5 on the
   panel Minor Media Operations, Hamburg, Warburg-Haus, September
   15, 2000
   
   2 To quote from Raymond's Frequently Asked Questions about Open
   Source: "The Open Source Initiative is a marketing program
   for free software. It's a pitch for free software on solid
   pragmatic grounds rather than ideological tub-thumping. The
   winning substance has not changed, the losing attitude and
   symbolism have." [Opea]
   
   3 Both the Debian Free Software Guidelines and the Open Source
   Definition were originally drafted by Bruce Perens, a Free
   Software developer and editor of the website technocrat.net
   http://www.technocrat.net.
   
   4 I.e. binary-only software which can be downloaded freely and
   used without licenses fees (Freeware) or by paying
   comparatively small licenses fees (Shareware).
   
   5 A prominent example is the XEmacs http://www.xemacs.orgtext
   editor which "forked" its codebase from GNU Emacs
   http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.htm. The same would be
   impossible in open standards development. The social dynamics
   and institutional control of open standards development is
   excellently described in Jeanette Hofmanns (German) essay Der
   Erfolg offener Standards und seine Nebenwirkungen [Hof99].
   
   6 There is an ongoing debate in Free Software culture whether
   operating systems based on the Linux kernel should be called
   "Linux" or rather "GNU/Linux". In order to be functional
   at all, a "Linux" setup relies upon the GNU C Compiler (gcc)
   to translate all program sourcecode into machine-executable
   binary software, the GNU C Library (glibc) as the interface
   between the Linux kernel and userspace applications, and the
   GNU tools for the basic user commands. Although it is possible
   to replace at least the GNU tools and the glibc with non-GNU
   workalikes, all common "Linux" distributions use the Linux +
   GNU software setup. I will therefore stick with the name
   "GNU/Linux" where I refer not only to the kernel, but to the
   whole operating system.
   
   7 Such as Macromedia's Shockwave and Flash in "Net.art",
   Opcode's MAX in electronic music and Eastgate's Storyspace in
   hypertext fictions.
   
   8 The artist group 0100101110101101.ORG
   http://www.0100101110101101.org put this issue up front when
   it mirrored and partially modified well-known Net.art web
   sites on its own web site.
   
   9 Early artistic computer networks like the Thing BBS
   http://www.thing.net charged their subscribers (at least in
   Berlin) before they migrated into the Internet.
   
   10 How net literature--"hyperfiction" and "new media
   poetry"--relates to poetic practices rooted in programmer's
   cultures is discussed in more detail in my (German) paper
   [Cra00].
   
   11 Among those companies are O'Reilly publishers, Sendmail
   Inc., VA Linux, Scriptics, Helix Code and Eazel. All of them
   are involved in the development or documentation of critical
   components of GNU/Linux operating systems.
   
   12 I thank Wau Holland for pointing this out to me in a
   prepatory meeting for the first Wizards of OS conference.
   
   13 Which can be read as "text" if text is linguistically and
   semiotically defined as a finite number of discrete signs
   chosen from a finite set of signs. In computing, "text" is
   rather colloquially understood as code from natural-language
   alphabets as opposed to binary code. Being a philologist, I
   refer to the prior concept of "text".
   
   14 According to [Bos98], the label "Net.art" was coined in 1996
   by the net artist Vuk Cosic. It has been associated with a
   particular generation of net artists since (involving, among
   others, Cosic himself, Heath Bunting, Olia Lialina, Alexej
   Shulgin, jodi and I/O/D).
      c/o Freie Universität Berlin, Seminar für Allgemeine und
   Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Hüttenweg 9, 14195 Berlin
-- 
Florian Cramer, PGP public key ID 6440BA05
&lt;http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/&gt;</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>9.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Free Software as Collaborative Tex</subject>
<from>Ronda Hauben</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 20 Sep 2000 12:56:05 -0400 (EDT)</date>
<content>Florian Cramer &lt;paragram {AT} gmx.net&gt; wrote:

&gt;  Free Software History
  
Good to see an effort to look at the history of the Internet and the
connection with Free Software.

&gt;   It is not accidental that history of Free Software runs
&gt;   parallel to the history of the Internet. The Internet is built
&gt;   on Unix networking technology. Unix used to be free for
&gt;   academic institutions in the 1970s, and it has been either the

Actually Unix wasn't free in its earliest days, when John Lion in
Australia and Robert Fabry wrote and asked for the sources from AT&amp;T. It
was available at a "nominal fee". It was a token payment, I think $110
Australian ($150 US).

That was in the 1974 period.

I don't know what the situation when the Australians or the folks sending
their tapes or Berkleley began sending out the BDS tapes.

(There is some discussion of all this in chapter 9 of Netizens.
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook)

&gt;   base or model of the common Free Software operating systems
&gt;   BSD and GNU/Linux.
   
&gt;   Any ordinary E-Mail message still reveals the affinity of the
&gt;   Internet and Unix technology: E-Mail itself is nothing but the
&gt;   Unix mail command. An E-Mail address of the form xy {AT} z.com is
&gt;   made up of what's historically a user name on a multiuser Unix
&gt;   system and, following the " {AT} ", the system's host name. This
&gt;   host name is resolved via the free Unix software bind
&gt;   according to the Internet domain name system (DNS); DNS itself
&gt;   is nothing but a networked extension of the Unix system file
&gt;   /etc/hosts. Since the Internet has marginalized or even
&gt;   replaced proprietary computer networks like IBM's EARN/Bitnet,
&gt;   Compuserve, the German Btx and the French Minitel, Unix
&gt;   networking technology is standard on all computing platforms.
   
Actually the Unix networking character was the bang symbol ! and an
address might look something like utzoo!utcsrgv!peterr That was the path
for the address on uucp.

The agreement to use " {AT} " which was the Internet meeting came at a meeting
in I thought the 1980's where people like Mark Horton and Jon Postel and
others were there to figure out a common addressing mechanism.

So the " {AT} " doesn't come historically from the UNIX side of all this

Bernard Lang has an interesting article in the Feb 2000 issue of La
Recherche which describes in a bit of a different way the connection
between early Unix and the ARPANET, and he refers

&gt;   In the 1970, Unix particularly attracted student hacker
&gt;   communities at the MIT and at the University of California at
&gt;   Berkeley. The concepts of open, decentralized computer
&gt;   networks and free Unix-like operating systems originated in 
&gt;   the computer science labs of these institutions. By
&gt;   the early 1990s, the "hacker" software written there had
&gt;   evolved into

Actually at MIT it was the AI labs and they used the pdp 10 machines --
one was the ITS (Incompatible Time Sharing).

I didn't think these were UNIX machines at this period.

Actually UNIX was only created at Bell Labs in 1969-1970's and announced
in 1974. Chapter 9 in Netizens gives this background.

(...)

Also it is interesting to see your references to "open architecture".

I recently wrote something for an encyclopedia on computers and computer
history about open architecture and found very little has been written
about it even though it is indeed the basis for the Internet's
architecture.

&gt;   Open technology has been a key factor for the acceptance of
&gt;   computers and networking: The open architecture of the IBM
&gt;   Personal Computer made computers cheap and popular since the
&gt;   1980s, and with the open architecture of the Internet,
&gt;   networking became popular in the early 1990s. 

I thoguht the bbs culture also supported the spread of a free software in
the 1980s.

Perhaps also looking at the ARPANET tradition of the free spread of
software would be of interest. And on early Usenet there were newsgroups
dedicated to spreading software.

Usenet was an early means of not only spreading Unix software but also
dicussion about how to deal with the bugs. Chapter 10 in Netizens
describes this evolution.

That's all I have time to comment on now. Good to see the effort to take
on such topics, and it is important to put them in their historical
context as that gives an idea of what is being built on and hence helps
provide a sense of direction forward and of the progress being made.

Cheers

Ronda
ronda {AT} panix.com
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>9.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Free Software as Collaborative Tex</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Thu, 21 Sep 2000 13:24:25 +0200</date>
<content>Am Wed, 20.Sep.2000 um 12:56:05 -0400 schrieb Ronda Hauben:

&gt; Good to see an effort to look at the history of the Internet and 
&gt; the connection with Free Software.

And thank you very much for your valuable corrections! I will apply your
bugfixes ASAP.

&gt; I thoguht the bbs culture also supported the spread of a free software
&gt; in the 1980s.

The BBS culture I know from here (Germany) was rather commercial and
inclined towards Warez. Most BBSs were run against subscription fees and
frequently charged additional fees for their download areas. The software
available on them were DOS, Amiga or Atari Shareware/Freeware binaries.
Still in the early 1990s (i.e. between 1990 and 1993), the GNU, BSD
&amp;c. software was available in the academic computer networks
(EARN/Bitnet w/ Internet gateway at the university where I first went
online).

Florian</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; the ?Cathedral? and the ?Bazaar??</subject>
<from>Holford-Lovell, Donna</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Sun, 1 Feb 2009 13:46:55 -0000</date>
<content>Dear All

It would be great to get you opinion on the following:

I am looking at open source and implementing this metaphor to a curatorial
practice. What effect would this have on exhibiting artists? Would the
audience benefit?

Also anyone with an interest in Eric S. Raymond?s free software development
model. I would like to know the following:

   1. What are your personal views about the ?Cathedral? and the ?Bazaar??

   2. If you subscribe to one of these models how much of it applies to the
whole of your life?

   3. Do you jump from one to another to suit your needs?

   4. Besides in a software engineering world, can the Cathedral and the
Bazaar be seen any where else? or could it be applied to something else?

I believe we need to get art out of its Cathedral ? could this metaphor
work?

Many thanks
Donna  

--

The University of Abertay Dundee is a charity registered in Scotland, No:SC016040</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; the ?Cathedral? and the ?Bazaar??</subject>
<from>Florian Cramer</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Sat, 7 Feb 2009 17:17:42 +0100</date>
<content>Hello Donna,
 
&gt; I am looking at open source and implementing this metaphor to a curatorial
&gt; practice. What effect would this have on exhibiting artists? Would the
&gt; audience benefit?

There already is a rich tradition of applying Open Source/free software
principles to art; "curatorship" seems a bit problematic as a term
(which it is not only in this context), self-organization may be more
appropriate. Examples can be found in the hack meetings which,
particularly in Italy, were hybrids of activist and artistic events, and
many related Internet art projects. But actually, the tradition is older
than even the terms "Open Source" and "free software". Since Ray
Johnson's New York Correspondance School in the 1960s, the Mail Art
network had its own codified system of decentralized, international,
open participation art exhibitions, events and publications, with 
the festivals and non-juried exhibitions of older avant-garde movements
forming yet another historical pretext.

&gt; Also anyone with an interest in Eric S. Raymond?s free software development
&gt; model. 

He pitched it "Open Source" as a more business-friendly term, against
the older, more activist term "free software".

&gt; I would like to know the following:
&gt; 
&gt;    1. What are your personal views about the ?Cathedral? and the ?Bazaar??

Again, a lot has already been written about this (for example, in "First
Monday" shortly after the Raymond's text appeared). Retrospectively, I
think there have been many confusions and urban myths about this essay.
Like Roland Barthes' "The Death of Author", it is a text that,
polemically speaking, nobody seems to have read yet everybody has an
opinion about. Among those urban myths are:

- that Raymond pitches an Open Source "bazaar" model against a
  proprietary Microsoft-ish "cathedral" model of software development.
  But in fact, it is about the decentralized development of Linux, the 
  operating system kernel supervised by Linus Torvalds [and not what 
  is commonly referred to as the whole Linux operating system], versus
  the classical small, closed committee style of development that had
  been characteristic for GNU software, the free BSDs and the X Window 
  System. On top of that, the text is not even literally about Open
  Source because the term did not yet exist when it was first published.

- Looking back at the above point more than ten years later, it is 
  probably fair to say that a clear-cut division of "bazaar"- and
  "cathedral"-style development methods no longer exists in Free
  Software development. The development of the Linux kernel has become
  more hierarchical, with several layers of developer hierarchies that
  a patch needs to go through in order to be accepted into the main line
  kernel, while on the other hand the development culture of GNU and BSD
  software has adapted itself better towards the Internet than in the
  1990s. (The now-standard use of networked version control systems like
  Subversion and git is a clear empirical indicator.)

- While not using the term "Open Source" in its initial version, the essay 
  fully preempts the later Open Source-vs.-Free Software controversy by
  discussing open, distributed development processes as technically
  superior to closed processes. [There are striking similarities to
  Bertalanffy's earlier General Systems Theory with its claim that
  in nature and society, only open systems survive while closed ones die
  of entropy, and of course to Popper's theory of the open society as
  the counter-model to societies founded on philosophical idealism.] 

  I remember an article from the German IT journal iX that, ten years
  after the manifesto, checked those claims and soundly disputed their
  black-and-white rhetoric. For example, Open Source and distributed
  development are clearly not a 100% cure against software bugs and
  security leaks (as opposed to Raymond's statement that "given enough
  eyes, all bugs are shallow). There have been terrible bugs and
  security nightmares - such as the recent Debian OpenSSL bug - even 
  in high profile FLOSS software projects. And the dialectics is also
  true: If there are not enough eyes, bugs can be annoying, for example
  in FLOSS multimedia authoring software from Cinelerra to PD that
  thrive on very small and often amateur programmer communities (as
  opposed to the OS kernels, file systems, network stacks, database
  servers etc.).

  It is probably fair to put Raymond's essay into the context of other
  optimistic late-1990s Internet theories of "crowd wisdom", "smart
  mobs" etc., that promote a similar cybernetic vision of a
  self-organizing critical mass that is the magic solution to all
  problems. Linux and, more recently, Wikipedia show that these theories
  are not completely off and that networked collaboration can amount
  to critical mass. But none of these projects are without their own 
  issues (such as conservatism: Linux reimplemented Unix
  instead of the arguably more advanced and interesting Plan9 or Lisp 
  Machine kernel architectures because Unix kernel architecture is
  the textbook knowledge of every computer science student; Wikipedia
  nowadays insists, in its angst-ridden compliance to culturally 
  conservative Wikipedia-bashing, on print publication references for
  everything that is claimed in a Wikipedia article), and "open
  collaboration" is not a magic bullet. 

  Mail Art may again serve as a good example, because it was so obsessed
  with egalitarianism that participation implied to never reject other
  people's project contributions although the phenomenon of "junk mail"
  was common and deplored even in the 1970s and 80s.
 

It should be noted, in case you're not familiar yet with Raymond's ultra
right-wing libertarian political background, that he chose metaphors of
the "bazaar" versus the "cathedral" quite on purpose - referring to a
free market model versus regulated production.

&gt; I believe we need to get art out of its Cathedral ? 

It is certainly true that art, inasmuch we speak of the contemporary
(visual) art system, is still feudalist in its structure. It is the only
of the modern arts whose economy is firmly based on the notion of one
material fetish object, with reproduction (unlike in books, music
records, films, software) being merely a second-rate, plebeian
illustration of the "original". Its sponsors are the modern successors
to the old feudal authorities; back then, the church and the courts,
nowadays rich people as the new aristocrats and, through its grants and
subsidies, the state as the authority that has replaced the church.

-F

-- 
blog:     http://en.pleintekst.nl
homepage: http://cramer.pleintekst.nl:70
          gopher://cramer.pleintekst.nl</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; the ?Cathedral? and the ?Bazaar??</subject>
<from>John Young</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Sun, 08 Feb 2009 11:33:05 -0500</date>
<content>It should be noted that "open source" has been appropriated by
the spy-media-education industry as an asymmetrical method 
for taking from open sources but not giving back, instead 
classifying putting within password-gated campuses the open
source material in order to obscure that the filchers have a
pecuniary interest in freely cultivated goodies. 

So say the SMEs and their beneficiary contractors in their openly 
proclaimed suck-you fuck-you policy to advertise for adjunct-academic 
and edu-start-ups to participate in (get bribe money for) in national 
security (spit) national patriomny (spit) endeavors, hand out a few 
contracts to the willingly witting desperately-seeking down but not
out bazaarists, and shut-out the disfavored with cathredral-like 
secrecy (tenure) orders, learning from the churches and banks 
to profess unction for believers and tithers while gathering wealth 
for the belly laughers of TARP for the top.

Bill Gates himself did that, preached that, as did Steve Jobs.
It is the golden egg luring millions to the openly promise 
medals of freedom from merciless religion of higher pecking order
education then reap the profits when the bloodsucked students 
are dunned for ursurous loan-repayments into the skyhigh-paid 
admins' baskets. Consider Wikipedia and a host of like openers 
savaging of contributed labor, abetted by herds of martinets
enforcing just what can be reputably (spit) published.

Net non-profits (spit) are no different than the others in bait and
switch via oh so weary rules of engagement for the unruly. Extreme 
unctuousity is bedevilment with strapped-on angel wings.

Now, for free my gang offers surefire immortality and depthless
wisdom, PayPal us $100 for the top secret URL at golden-egg.
domain. Don't believe anything else, motley fool.</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>11.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Open letter to the Free Software Movement</subject>
<from>Jaromil</from>
<to>nettime-l@kein.org</to>
<date>Thu, 26 Sep 2019 17:02:33 +0200</date>
<content>This is an open letter to all the people who, in their good faith, are
concerned about the recent events which have shaken the long-standing
leadership of the Free Software Movement and the GNU project.

Online:
https://www.dyne.org/open-letter-to-the-free-software-movement/

RT: https://twitter.com/DyneOrg/status/1177233578771591168

Context:
https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallmans-exit-heralds-a-new-era-in-tech/

Dear hackers, first and foremost let us say that, as a collective and
in the true uncompromising spirit of the teachings of Free/Libre
Software/Society, we are capable of doing much better than what has
just happened.

Many of us work everyday towards ensuring that everyone, regardless of
their ethniticy, religion, gender, or neurotypicality, can
participate, learn and share in our communities. We do not claim we
are perfect, we sometimes make mistakes, some of them guided by
systemic patterns and structures of power still entangling us, and
some of them just due to our human nature . But we claim our right to
learn every day how to become better at including all contributions
and opinions, and this implies the ability of making mistakes without
being destroyed by them.

In the past years it has become clear that our movement and our ethos
has transformed the world as we know it, with all the courage and all
the mistakes considered; some of us rose to fame, while some others
wore masks, both as a message and as a protection from the regime of
global espionage.  In any case, many of us have sacrificed a great
deal of comfort in life to change what needed to be changed.

Let us not be mistaken about the cause that brought us here and let us
not forget where the injustice comes from.

Let us not forget then what we, the people, have successfully built so
far, resisting to the incredible pressure that corporate corruption
and military regimes have put on us. Let us not forget that the battle
is still raging and we are losing sight and positioning.

Open Source, as an economic model based on knowledge acquisition by
corporate powers, is part of the problem.

Free/Libre Software, as an uncompromising philosophy and ethics
focused on knowledge sharing and participation, is an important part
of the solution.

The era of benevolent dictators for life in Free software projects is
probably coming to an end. And we shall be relieved as well as
empowered by that: it is now our turn to stand strong, united as a
movement, to defend our values without compromise and to improve the
quality of our interactions. It is now our turn to look beyond
personal responsibilities, to acknowledge that if a context is
poisoned by bullying, machism and sexist behavior, it is not just the
fault of a single person, but of all those who tolerate and support
those conducts. We have now the opportunity to point to the problem
and to solve it and this will improve our movement, the Free Software
movement.

What we really don't need to do is to ignore, denigrate or disown the
values of the Free Software movement.

We need to honour the pride of the people of India who had the courage
to stand up against the "free basic" campaign. We need to support the
courage of all those defending network neutrality from attacks capable
of putting under control the political integrity of entire continents.
We need to facilitate the synergy between community networks in Oaxaca
enabled by software written by activists all around the World.  We
need to empower the self-determination of entire populations in an age
in which computing is as pervasive as our own social relationships.

We need to reclaim our freedom from an ever-watching system of control
and prediction that judges us from the algorithmic projection of our
own intentions.  We need to defend our freedom to be able to denounce
all of this and speak freely by means that connect us, all over the
world, without borders, intermediaries and censorship.

We need to be conscious of where we are standing in this fight.

As a trans-national movement, united by solidarity, awareness and
ethics, we shall not negotiate the motivations we fight for.

We would not publish this letter if we would not think it was
extremely urgent to do so. The Free Software movement is losing
ground, grip and resources, and the scarce resources available to the
movement are not even shared equally. Global meetings that are vital
to our legacy and development are at risk of being shut down or
assimilated by corporate corruption: the Free Society Conference and
Nordic Summit (FSCONS) will not take place this year, after many
iterations that have hosted outstanding standards of diversity. The
biggest community-based event for free software developers in the
world, FOSDEM, is at risk of violating many of its foundational
principles by welcoming corporate sponsors, who contribute to the
dilution of meaning and ethical urgency of Free Software by supporting
corporate Openwashing campaigns.

And this is just a small account from Europe. We know that, wherever
you are in the world, if you have been in this movement, you are
probably struggling as well. Believe us now when we say that it will
not help to burn the Man, to obliterate the memory of our cause, to
expunge someone's contributions to it by means of an angry mob; that
would be an act of harassment we cannot be able to accept.

We will start improving as a movement when we show the highest notion
of what a movement can be: capable of reflection, understanding and
healing its wounds, ready to evolve and progress while maintaining the
integrity of its aims.

We are not the problem, we are part of the solution.

The Free World needs the Free Software movement.</content>
</mail>
</mails>
</chapter>