Free and Open Source Software

Topic Owners: dulles,Ayelet

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Guest wish list

• Mako
• Eric von Hippel
• Lewis Hyde
• Eric Raymond/OSI ?
• PJ/Groklaw

The Big Think team might be able help secure some of these folks -- hit me up at peter@bigthink.com if you'd like some assistance making contact. PeterH 07:11, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Readings

• An extract of free, as in speech and beer by Darren Wershler-Henry?
• An extract about gift economies, such as The Gift by Mauss, or The Gift by Hyde.
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar
• a list of resources on F/OSS

Introduction

There are a number of different motivations and interests surrounding the F/OSS. Richard Stallman assets that software (libre) is important, and that this value is paramount. Meanwhile, companies like RedHat appear to be trying desperately hard to turn a profit on a free (gratis) product with a new business model. When somebody says, "I use free software", do they mean software libre or software gratis, and why? Clearly, a discussion of the F/OSS movement absolutely must explore the division between "free as in speech" and "free as in beer".

The libre/gratis distinction seems to relate to a sort of war between Free Culture and Permission Culture, which might be recast as a clash between the drive of economic development and the drive of cultural development. Of course, the law still respects copyright and patents, so Free Culture is a long way from a meaningful victory. But software libre has managed to turn the tools of copyright upon themselves with the invention of the copyleft licensing system. Given the usefulness of such licenses, and their availability, maybe the law of copyrights doesn't need to adjust at all in order to account for free culture.

Maybe casting the division as one between economics and culture is just a divisive technique. Perhaps theories of gift economies can help us come to understand software libre as attempting to create a separate software economy?

Essential Question

Given the philosophical and economic drives that support the F/OSS movement, to what extent does the law properly account for each? Is the "free as in speech" / "free as in beer" distinction with us forever? Will there always be some deep seated friction between the two, based in a culture war? To help us think about these exceptionally broad questions, we propose to discuss the libre/gratis dichotomy along with several others, and encourage students to question the usefulness, even the existence of these dichotomies.

Dichotomy?

• Free as in Beer v. Free as in Speech
• Copyright v. Copyleft
• Copyleft v. Free Culture - is there a difference?
• The Economic Drive v. The Cultural Drive
• Gifts v. Reputations - why contribute to F/OSS? (Ayelet - can you elaborate?)
• Insiders v. Outsiders - are there deep disconnects between the business, software, and legal worlds that make common ground hard to find?