Notes on Oct 16 Session on Open Source

Open Table on Open Source

Last week’s discussion on open source, if general, succeeded in bringing to the forum diverse and passionate attitudes towards the subject.

The discussion approached open source from three angles: first, open source as a business model, second, open source as an ideological stance towards software systems, and third, open source as an attribute of design tools and environments. A transversal idea –that could be further explored in future Forums- is the emergence of new models of architectural practice, and authorship, based on one or in all of the previous categories. Its underlying question was What is the nature of design knowledge, and can/should it be further made into the object of new kinds of economic transactions?

The discussion could go on and be enriched if grounded on some common concepts (and projects). It would help, for instance, to distinguish between two different enterprises: while Free Software and Open Source refer to very different ideologies, we tended to confuse the attributes of each in the debate.

With this purpose in mind Steffen and I put together some references and materials that may be relevant. Consistent with their subject, many of the readings can be freely downloaded from the web. You can check it out in http://www.des-comp.net/blog/?p=138. This is a very incomplete list, and would be great if it is taken as a starting point to be improved and added upon.

Via the blog and the forum we hope to build a shared understanding of the topic. Please add comments and references to this list and materials.

References

Manuel De Landa_Open Source: a movement in search of a philosophy

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/delanda/pages/opensource.htm

Old De Landa’s take on Open Source.

Richard Stallman_Free Software, Free Society

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

These essays are key for understanding the distinction between the Open Source and the Free Software movements (with capitals) as drawn by MacArthur genius, founder of the GNU project and free software advocate Richard Stallman. This document summarizes the ethical aspects of FS: “to use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with others.” And “Free software has become the foundation of a learning society where we share our knowledge in a way that others can build upon and enjoy”. Stallman formulates his main theses about free software (‘free software’ doesn’t mean ‘software for free’, but more like ‘free speech’), and how it is different from the open source idea, which he perceives as a distortion of the initial enterprise. The section I cite in the next paragraph is intriguing. It shows how free software is not necessarily a negation of capitalist transactions:

“Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on”.

Christopher Kelty: Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software

http://twobits.net/read/
http://twobits.net/pub/Kelty-TwoBits.pdf

Throughout his discussion Kelty focuses on the political and economic aspects of free software-making communities, and puts forward the concept of “recursive publics” as a way to pin down a new kind of social actor which is self-regulating, self-conscious, self-maintaining, and self-modifying. Kelty’s discussion of geek’s making of free software highlights the rhetoric devices through which members of a community define their identities.

Lev Manovich_Software Takes Command

http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/11/softbook.html
http://softwarestudies.com/softbook/manovich_softbook_11_20_2008.pdf

Paraphrasing Gideon’s classic “Mechanization Takes Command”, Manovich’s title is concerned with the cultural foundations of the media-creation software industry, and is built on the premise that during the years comprised between 1990 and the mid 2000s software applications replaced virtually every traditional media creation tool, becoming today’s “main engine of culture”. Contemporary media production –Manovich argues- cannot be understood without taking into account and understanding the exchanges of design descriptions and artifacts across software platforms that typically define today’s design workflow’s. The book’s discussion of emergent models of authorship in the “software age” is merely enumerative but can be useful for discussion purposes. Manovich discusses open source as one of the new models of authorship that emerge in a society where digital means of production are distributed.

Free Software Foundation

http://www.fsf.org/
The home to the FS initiative.

“To use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with others.  Free software has become the foundation of a learning society where we share our knowledge in a way that others can build upon and enjoy.”

Des-Comp (only slightly related) References

Dan Smithwick’s SMArchS thesis

Not strictly related to open source, but suggestive of questions of distributed authorship, Smithwick proposes a scenario in which user’s “designs” are made into constructible objects by a proprietary system working as an online social network. The proposed system raises interesting questions about the commoditization of the very notion of design through the paradigm of mass customization.

Kalaya Kovidvisith’s thesis

Comments: TODO

Tom Plewe’s thesis

Comments: TODO

Free Software Design Tools

Steffen Reichert compiled a great list of free software design tools:

An Open-Source Design Software Package:

Operating System
Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com/

Office Suite
Open Office - http://www.openoffice.org/

Image Manipulation
Gimp - http://www.gimp.org/

Vector Graphics
Inkscape - http://www.inkscape.org/

Desktop Publishing
Scribus - http://www.scribus.net/

Visual Programming
Processing - http://processing.org/

3D Content Creation
Blender - http://www.blender.org/

CAD
QCAD - http://www.qcad.org/index.html

CAM
LinuxCNC - http://www.linuxcnc.org/

Processing
processing.org

Additional References

Add papers and references here!

Comments of literature: Daniel Cardoso
Software list: Steffen Reichert

---