This article takes you deep into the dynamics of the relationship between the FLOSS developer community and for-profit companies.
Authors: Birkinbine, Benjamin
Translation: Tiao, LXDAO
Translator's Preface:
I came across this book by chance and later saw Trent Van Epps discussing the Protocol Guild in a video, using the framework from this book to talk about what the Protocol Guild is doing. So, I think it should be beneficial to read, and I wish you a fruitful journey.
This article is the first two sections of the book "Incorporating the Digital Commons: Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software".
In March 2012, the Linux Foundation released a report titled "Linux Kernel Development: How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It". The kernel is an important part of the operating system that facilitates communication between computer hardware and software, and the Linux kernel development project is considered "one of the largest collaborative software projects in history" (Linux Foundation, 2012:1). In addition to a technical overview of how kernel development has changed over time, the report's focus section made an interesting point: Microsoft was one of the top 20 contributors to the kernel. This was the first time Microsoft became a top contributor to the kernel, but it was not the only company among the top 20 contributors (note: the translation does not distinguish between "Corporate" and "Company," sometimes translated as "公司" and sometimes as "企业"). Other contributing companies include Intel, IBM, Google, Texas Instruments, Cisco, HP, and Samsung. The Linux operating system is a type of Free (Libre) and Open Source Software (FLOSS) that allows users the freedom to learn, use, copy, modify, adapt, or distribute it. So, why would large companies contribute directly to a FLOSS project that does not seem to directly contribute to their profits? This question becomes even more intriguing when considering that many companies contributing to the kernel not only compete with each other in the information technology market but also directly compete with Linux in the operating system market, such as Microsoft and Google.
In fact, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer, Steve Ballmer, once described Linux as "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches" (Greene, 2001). Ballmer was referring to the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), which is the most commonly used free software license. For software protected by the GPL, users are granted the rights to study, use, copy, modify, or adapt it as they wish. Additionally, users also have the right to redistribute the software, and may even charge for modified versions, as long as the distributor does not impose additional restrictions on the rights granted by the GPL. The GPL does not prohibit companies from modifying free software or charging for modified versions, but companies must continue to grant the rights of free software to their end users. Ballmer's remarks imply that free software is at odds with commercial software companies. If this is true, then Microsoft and other commercial software companies would have no motivation to directly contribute to one of the largest open source projects.
Furthermore, it is worth noting that Ballmer made the above condemnation of Linux on June 1, 2001. Just 27 days later, on June 28, 2001, the U.S. Department of Justice convicted Microsoft of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act for its anticompetitive behavior, primarily because Microsoft bundled its Internet Explorer web browser with the Windows operating system, rapidly expanding its market share in the web browser market. However, since 2001, Microsoft's stance on Linux and open source has undergone significant changes, as evidenced by its inclusion in the top 20 contributors to the 2012 Linux kernel. In 2012, Microsoft also established Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary dedicated to promoting interoperability between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies, while also promoting open standards and open source. During these 12 years, what changes did Microsoft undergo to completely redefine its relationship with FLOSS?
Microsoft is not an exception. In fact, since around 2007-2008, companies' involvement in FLOSS projects has continued to increase. Table 1.1 lists the companies that contributed code to the Linux kernel versions 4.8-4.13 in 2017. The annual report on kernel development for that year confirmed that a total of 225 companies contributed to the project. While the Linux kernel is just one example of many companies contributing to FLOSS projects, there are similar cases. This raises a question: What motivates these companies to contribute to FLOSS projects? How do they contribute to FLOSS projects? How does the FLOSS developer community coordinate the involvement of companies in their projects? Does the FLOSS developer community have ways to deal with the unwelcome influence or intervention of companies in their projects?
Table 1.1 Top contributing companies to the Linux kernel
1.1. Argument and Structure of the Book
The overall purpose of this book is to study the seemingly contradictory relationship between the FLOSS community and for-profit companies. I adopt a critical political economy perspective to explore the power dynamics between the FLOSS developer community and companies that sponsor FLOSS projects or appropriate the software output of FLOSS labor. After all, FLOSS products and their production processes have been widely praised for bringing about revolutionary changes that can provide greater freedom and autonomy for users and contributors (Benkler, 2006; Raymond, 2000; Stallman, 2002). My project intervenes in these debates by balancing these claims. I position technology as a site of social struggle and place commons-based peer production within a broader social context to illustrate how it interacts with capitalist production. To do this, I demonstrate how the so-called revolutionary changes brought about by FLOSS and commons-based peer production are incorporated into corporate strategies and structures.
The core argument here is that free and open source software is dialectically situated between capital and the commons. On the one hand, the community of programmers is committed to creating software that is accessible, usable, and adaptable by others, making it a digital commons. Through this iterative software development, the speed and scale of software production are both increased. This represents a virtuous cycle, where the collective of software programmers actively contributes to the community, and the community claims collective ownership of FLOSS projects. Therefore, FLOSS programmers can be seen as commoners, as they are always committed to ensuring the reproduction and sustainability of commons-based software projects. On the other hand, capital seeks to capture the value produced by the FLOSS community. This includes leveraging the production process of FLOSS (i.e., collective labor, or commons-based peer production) and commodifying products (i.e., specific FLOSS projects). The latter provides the basis for the commercial exploitation of collaborative production in the FLOSS community.
This is not to say that the goals of the commoners of free software and capitalist companies are always in opposition. Researchers have shown that commercial sponsorship of Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects often makes these projects more attractive to developers, ensuring the long-term sustainability of the projects (Santos, Kuk, Kon, & Pearson, 2013). However, there are also examples of ruptured relationships, especially when it comes to unwelcome encroachments by capital on common resources such as digital commons. In such cases, the interests of the FLOSS community and the sponsors diverge, leading to a confrontational relationship. The challenge for the FLOSS community is not only to ensure the continued vitality of its digital commons but also to maintain the community ethos that initially enabled its development.
So, how can the relationship between digital commons and capital's unexpected encroachment on projects be negotiated? This requires consideration of multiple factors, and subsequent chapters will provide empirical evidence to illustrate how these dynamic relationships are manifested.
In general, the commons, specifically the digital commons, can be understood as another value system emerging within capitalism. At times, the value cycles of the commons intersect with the accumulation cycles of capital. Therefore, a dialectical understanding of the relationship between free software and capital helps to explain the contradictions between these two forces operating according to different logics. Chapter 2, by drawing on theories of capitalism, digital labor, and the commons, specifically outlines these differences; my aim is to develop a critical theory of the digital commons by incorporating a critique of capitalism into the theory of the commons.
In Chapters 3-5, I provide three detailed case studies that demonstrate the dynamic relationships between the FLOSS community and businesses from different perspectives. I categorize the discussion of corporate involvement in FLOSS into three thematic areas, with each case study serving as an exemplar of that theme. These three themes are Processes, Products, and Politics. Collectively, these three case studies reflect the general trends of corporate involvement in FLOSS projects. Additionally, each case study provides a nuanced understanding of these dynamic complexities and allows for a detailed interpretation of some inherent contradictions in these relationships.
First, Chapter 3 focuses on the tumultuous relationship between Microsoft and FLOSS. This relationship demonstrates how the production process of FLOSS effectively ushered in a new era of industrial software production. While other companies also showed willingness to collaborate with the FLOSS community, Microsoft's dominance in the personal computing software market in the 1980s and 1990s made it an important case study in how software production evolved over time. The key historical event here is the antitrust ruling against Microsoft, marking the end of an era dominated by a single company completing software production and attempting to exclude other companies from accessing product code. In fact, one of the consent decrees in the Microsoft antitrust ruling required Microsoft to provide third parties with access to its Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), a stark contrast to its earlier anti-competitive business practices.
In the 1990s, as Microsoft dominated the software market and was eventually found to violate antitrust laws, other software companies were also finding ways to turn FLOSS products into successful commercial products. My analysis of Red Hat, Inc. in Chapter 4 illustrates how FLOSS products are integrated into the overall business strategy of a commercial company. Red Hat remains the largest and only publicly traded company that provides software and services based entirely on free software. Therefore, Red Hat cannot rely on traditional copyright protection to prevent others from using its software source code. Thus, my analysis of Red Hat explores how it creates a profitable business based on free software.
Finally, the third case study in Chapter 5 focuses on how the FLOSS community responds to unwelcome influences imposed by companies on its projects. Sun Microsystems was once a significant sponsor of FLOSS projects, but it was later acquired by Oracle Corporation, which had different plans for these projects. In this chapter, I focus on the different fates of three projects—OpenSolaris operating system, MySQL relational database management system, and OpenOffice office software—and how the communities involved in these projects resisted Oracle's encroachment. In fact, this case study illustrates the political issues involved in negotiating the boundaries between the FLOSS community and companies, while also demonstrating some strategies the FLOSS community can use to protect its projects.
In the remaining parts of this introduction, I will provide more background information to help understand the importance of FLOSS. This includes placing FLOSS in historical context and broader discussions of the commons, as well as some key moments in general software development and the history of FLOSS. In these sections, I will also introduce some terms that are used throughout the book, with the hope of avoiding conceptual confusion. I will then discuss the cultural significance of FLOSS. Finally, I will introduce the methodology of the current research. Readers familiar with the history and characteristics of FLOSS can skip directly to the next chapter or the section at the end of this chapter explaining the methodology.
1.2. Positioning Free and Open Source Software
Although the free software community and the open source community are interconnected and not mutually exclusive in some cases, they each have distinct characteristics, so it is best to describe them according to the underlying spirit of each movement. To place the emergence of FLOSS in the context of the development of the computer and software industry, the following will briefly introduce the history of these industries. After the discussion, I will focus on two key figures related to FLOSS—Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds—and the historical context in which they operated. They represent the free software and open source movements, respectively.
1.2.1. Tracing the History of Free and Open Source Software
Before the differentiation between the processing of information by machines and the calculation of numbers, these tasks were performed manually. However, human calculations were sometimes prone to errors. In order to reduce this uncertainty, philosopher and mathematician Charles Babbage, working at the University of Cambridge in 1822, proposed that "errors could be eliminated only by the fabrication of tables by machinery" (Gleick, 2011: 95). Based on this, Babbage proposed the "Difference Engine," which performed routine calculations mechanically and can be considered the origin of the modern computer we are familiar with today. Later, Babbage expanded his ideas and planned to create a new type of machine that could be controlled by programmable and storable instructions for ease of operation. This iteration was called the "Analytical Engine," but it still only provided the hardware or mechanism necessary to implement this process. However, this hardware needed to be combined with software to function.
It can be said that the idea of software originated with Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, commonly known as Ada Lovelace. In 1843, she proposed that Babbage's "Analytical Engine," in addition to performing numerical calculations, could also perform a series of other operations. By abstracting the difference between two things, Lovelace believed that the Analytical Engine could be programmed to perform operations dependent on symbols and meanings, which the machine could understand. Although Lovelace did not live to see her ideas realized, she developed the idea of "software" and is hailed as the first programmer.
Although Babbage and Lovelace are considered pioneers in the development of modern computer and software ideas, it was not until the Second World War that machines of this kind began to be built in earnest. The development of computer science and information theory—such as Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems, Alan Turing's concept of the Universal Turing Machine, Claude Shannon's mathematical theory of communication, and Norbert Wiener's cybernetics—provided theoretical inspiration for the development of these machines. Before, during, and after World War II, many developments in modern computing were used for military purposes. One of the most well-known examples is the Enigma machine used by Germany to encrypt secret messages, and the Bombe machines used by the British to decrypt these messages (Smith, 2011). In 1941, German electrical engineer Konrad Zuse built the Z3, considered to be the first electromechanical, programmable, fully automatic digital computer (Zuse, 1993). The first similar computer in the United States was successfully developed by John Atanasoff at Iowa State University in 1942 (Copeland, 2006). Just a year later, codebreakers at Bletchley Park in the UK began using the first fully functional electronic digital computer, part of the Government Code and Cypher School. This new machine was called "Colossus" and was used to decrypt German communications during the war. By the end of the war, Bletchley Park had 10 "Colossus" machines used for decrypting German communications (Copeland, 2006).
After these initial milestones, the development of modern computers accelerated as many early pioneers began working for academic institutions and private companies after the war. In the United States, Grace Hopper, as a member of the United States Naval Reserve's "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service" (WAVES) during World War II, was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University. There, she participated in the Mark I computer project manufactured by IBM in 1944. Later, Hopper began working for private companies and promoted the concept of machine-independent programming languages. This led to the development of the Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) in 1959. Additionally, Hopper popularized the term "debugging," which refers to removing defective materials or code from a program. While Hopper may not have been the inventor of the term, she famously removed a moth causing a short circuit from a Mark II computer at Harvard University, popularizing the term (Deleris, 2006).
In the 1960s, the emergence of microprocessors significantly reduced the cost of computing. As a result, amateur programmers and computer enthusiast communities began experimenting with this technology in the following years. One notable example is the founding of the Homebrew Computer Club by Gordon French and Fred Moore at the Community Computer Center in Menlo Park, California in 1975. The Homebrew Computer Club provided an open forum for hobbyists to exchange parts and ideas for building personal computers, with the goal of making computing accessible to more people. Chapter 3 will provide a detailed overview of this hobbyist community, as it played a significant role in the rise of Microsoft. Apart from these hobbyist communities, most computer development occurred in the military, academic institutions, and private companies.
Notably, the initial development of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1958 and the founding of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1970 were significant. Programmers at the time used a proprietary programming language called Unix, owned by AT&T. Richard Stallman, a programmer at MIT, began working at the laboratory in 1971. Stallman found that when he wanted to use the Unix programming language outside of officially sanctioned areas, AT&T denied him access to the code. In protest, he announced in a computer bulletin board in 1983 that he was developing a Unix-based language that would be freely available for others to use. In 1985, Stallman published "The GNU Manifesto," outlining the goals of his new project, the reasons for developing it, and the entities it aimed to counteract. This programming language was called "GNU," a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix." In addition to the programming language, Stallman also developed the GNU General Public License (GPL), which stipulated that anyone could freely access the source code, and those using the GPL also agreed that their contributions would have the same level of availability. This ensured that computer programmers could freely share their work with each other, creating a form of common property opposed to other proprietary and closed products.
Stallman became a leading figure in the movement against proprietary software. He believed that access to source code was a fundamental right and hoped that others would also believe this. He summarized this viewpoint in a famous dictum: "It's freedom in the free, not free beer" (Stallman, 2002), positioning free software as a moral right. The definition of free software stipulates that "users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software" (Free Software Foundation, 2012). As the principles of free software gradually spread beyond the borders of the United States, others attempted to reduce confusion with the English term "free" by using the French term "libre" instead of "gratis." Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to advance his movement against proprietary software. He is a passionate countercultural figure who continues to support the philosophy of free software.
Stallman is widely regarded as a leading figure in the free software movement, while open source software is often associated with Linus Torvalds. The stories of Torvalds and Stallman are similar in many ways, but differ in philosophy. In the 1980s, free software projects began to develop, but were generally small in scale. At that time, free software had not yet found a way to collaborate on a larger scale. Torvalds wanted to develop a kernel for an open source operating system. Instead of relying on a large number of individual programmers to accomplish this task, he released his project's source code and named it "Linux," a combination of his name Linus and the programming language Minix (itself a simplified version of AT&T's Unix). Torvalds encouraged anyone interested in the project to contribute, as long as they made their work available to the community so that others could gradually complete the kernel. The project was successful, and eventually led to the birth of the open source operating system Linux. By requiring those writing code to publish their work (no matter how small the changes may seem), this large-scale programming project was coordinated. The reason for doing so was that coordinated efforts could reduce the amount of redundant work, as encapsulated in the maxim known as "Linus's Law" by Eric Raymond: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (Raymond, 2000).
In terms of how they view the relationship between free software and proprietary software, Stallman and Torvalds have different perspectives. In opposing proprietary software, Stallman tends to take a confrontational approach, while Torvalds is less forceful. Williams (2002) describes a decisive moment at a conference in 1996: Stallman and Torvalds appeared together in a discussion group. Torvalds expressed admiration for the work done by Microsoft and believed that advocates of free software could collaborate with companies. Such suggestions are often considered taboo, as Stallman is highly respected in the programming community, and the Free Software Foundation typically takes a very strong stance against proprietary software companies. Powell (2012) made a similar distinction between free software and open source:
"Open source software, as an industrial process, developed on the basis of the free software development culture, but it deviates from the political concern of the free software development culture for the shared and maintained knowledge commons, focusing instead on the efficiency of the open source software production process" (692).
Therefore, the moment at the 1996 conference marked a turning point: the fervor of the free software movement thawed slightly, as Torvalds began to represent a more liberal approach to free software. Here, "liberal" is used in its literal sense, not to denote a specific political stance; the term should be understood as being open to new ideas or behaviors while being willing to relinquish traditional values. From this perspective, Linus's support for the work done by Microsoft also indicates his willingness to collaborate with Microsoft (or other commercial companies) to produce the best software, rather than adhering to Stallman and the Free Software Foundation's anti-corporate stance.
In summary, we can understand the free software and open source movements from different philosophical perspectives. Stallman and advocates of free software tend to make moral claims against supporting proprietary software, while Torvalds and supporters of open source tend to take a more liberal and inclusive stance. Although Stallman and Torvalds are used to illustrate the differences between the free software community and the open source community, they should not be seen as mutually exclusive communities, nor should they be seen as representatives of the entire free software and open source community. A characteristic of the free and open source software community is that while the entire community agrees that software should be freely available for users to study, modify, adapt, or customize, its members often fiercely defend their preferred free software projects while mocking other software projects. In a sense, this demonstrates their loyalty and establishes closer ties within niche communities under the larger free and open source software community. This project does not focus on the internal divisions within these groups, but rather on the relationship between this community and the businesses that rely on its labor. Therefore, we use "Free (Libre) and Open Source Software" or "FLOSS" to refer to the entire community.
1.2.2. Free and Open Source Software: Silent and Ubiquitous
Since the 1980s and 1990s, FLOSS has proven to be an efficient and effective way of producing software. Whether we realize it or not, most people rely on FLOSS in their daily computing activities, as it provides crucial infrastructure for the operation of the internet. Taking the Linux kernel discussed in the introduction to this chapter as an example, we can glimpse the scale and scope of some FLOSS projects. When first released in 1991, the Linux kernel consisted of about 10,000 lines of code. The Linux kernel version 4.13, released in September 2017, had nearly 25 million lines of code, developed by almost 1,700 developers and 225 companies working together (Corbet and Kroah-Hartman, 2017: 11). Additionally, the Linux operating system has been widely used. For example, in the supercomputer operating system market, Linux (or other operating systems derived from Linux) holds 100% market share (Top500.org, 2018a). All of the world's most powerful computers rely on Linux or Linux-based operating systems. This includes the world's fastest and most powerful supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, as of the writing of this report (Top500.org, 2018b). While Linux's share in the personal desktop computer market is still small, the operating system has been customized and used in various settings.
In the United States, Linux is used for advanced military operations. For example, the U.S. Navy announced that its $3.5 billion destroyer, the USS Zumwalt, was described as "the world's most technologically advanced surface combatant" and effectively serves as an armed floating data center, equipped with servers running various Linux distributions and over 6 million lines of code (Mizokami, 2017; Gallagher, 2013). Additionally, according to Keith Chuvala, the space operations manager at NASA, the International Space Station transitioned from the Windows operating system to Debian Linux because they wanted "a stable and reliable operating system—something that would give us in-house control" (Bridgewater, 2013).
In fact, Linux and its derivative systems also provide critical components for some of the most well-known tech companies, as briefly discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Although I only delve into a few companies in subsequent chapters, there are other interesting cases that illustrate the different dynamics between businesses and the FLOSS community. Therefore, it is worth mentioning that these notable cases are just to emphasize the ubiquity of Linux. For example, Google's Android operating system is one of the world's most popular mobile platforms and is based on the Linux kernel. However, some key components of the Android operating system are still proprietary to Google (see Amadeo, 2018). In addition to Google, other companies like Canonical rely on Linux to create customized operating system distributions. Ubuntu, produced by Canonical, is one of the most widely used Linux distributions.
Linux has been widely adopted globally. Some countries have developed their own versions of Linux to meet their specific needs, and some cities have even legislated to prioritize the use of Linux operating systems. For example, from 1999 to 2001, four cities in Brazil—Amparo, Solonópole, Recife, and Ribeirão Preto—legally required government agencies to use or prioritize the use of Linux. This decision was primarily based on economic considerations, as Brazil reportedly paid nearly $1 billion to Microsoft for software licenses from 1999 to 2004. After transitioning to free and open source software, Brazil expected to save approximately $120 million annually. In supporting free software, Brazil remains one of the more progressive countries. In Brazil, many policies and initiatives related to free and open source software are driven by social activist communities, which are able to influence the decision-making process and formulate policies that oppose mainstream neoliberal ideologies. In a brilliant article in 2011, Shaw referred to these activists as "Insurgent Experts."
The Indian state of Kerala has also taken similar measures to support free software—phasing out proprietary software from the education system. It is estimated that this initiative saves the state about $58 million annually. The city of Munich in Germany developed a local version of Linux called LiMux and used it as the operating system for 15,000 municipal officials until 2017. The National University of Defense Technology in China also developed the Kylin operating system based on Linux. Additionally, the "One Laptop Per Child" project uses computers with a Fedora-based free and open source operating system. Fedora is a free software project sponsored by Red Hat, which we will discuss in Chapter 4.
In addition to the widespread use of Linux, the principles of open source have also been applied to areas beyond information technology. For example, open-source hardware (see Söderberg, 2011) can increase people's access to physical goods such as furniture, musical instruments, building materials, and wind turbines. These projects are particularly attractive to people living in developing countries, where access to information, goods, and services may be limited. Open Source Ecology is one ambitious project in this field, providing a "blueprint for a global village" and guidelines for building industrial machines using recycled or low-cost materials. While this is just one outstanding example, it demonstrates the optimistic spirit and creativity of applying open source principles to an entire way of life, not just information technology. However, the core values of these projects do not necessarily originate from open-source software. Instead, cultural values such as openness, sharing, mutual assistance, respect, and kindness form the foundational values for building communities. When these principles are applied on a larger scale, they can lead to a more sustainable future, especially when these principles are linked to environmental and ecological conservation practices. However, these principles only become radical claims in systems that do not encourage or rarely encourage their consideration.
Although the FLOSS community is a socio-technical system, FLOSS enthusiasts also engage in face-to-face collaboration through global Linux User Groups (LUGs). LUGs hold regular meetings to promote FLOSS, help new users install FLOSS, troubleshoot issues, or simply to meet other enthusiasts. The social connections within these groups are mediated by their shared interest in technology. As community members gather around a common technical passion, their cultural practices rely on interconnected network technologies and are supported by these technologies. As more people gain access to the internet, new participants in these communities have increased opportunities to contribute.
Finally, it is worth noting that more and more of our social lives are conducted online—working, communicating with friends and colleagues, reading news, watching movies and TV shows, listening to music, and more. When we connect to the internet and visit websites, information requests are relayed through a network of interconnected servers, which facilitate communication between other clients on the network. The operating systems running these servers are increasingly based on FLOSS projects such as Linux or FreeBSD, but Microsoft also designs server software. This is another example of FLOSS projects competing with proprietary companies like Microsoft. Therefore, whether we realize it or not, our ability to connect to the internet may partly depend on the ability of FLOSS projects to collaborate with proprietary software. This further underscores the need to understand how proprietary software and FLOSS projects collaborate, and what happens when these relationships break down. Analyzing the dynamics within these relationships can help us understand the factors that enable and constrain our ability to connect with others online.
These examples illustrate that Linux and the broader FLOSS community are no longer just tools used by computer enthusiasts. Their widespread use and continued growth in various high-level environments globally demonstrate the power of the FLOSS production model and the effectiveness of its products. As FLOSS is increasingly applied in various settings, understanding how businesses, governments, non-profit organizations, and other institutions engage with FLOSS projects will become increasingly important. Therefore, FLOSS has become an important area of study, not only because of its increasing prevalence, but also because of the claims made about the characteristics of its products and production processes—democratic, egalitarian, and non-market. This is the perspective that this book seeks to contribute to these debates.
1.2.3. FLOSS and Hacker Culture
Recently, the term "hacker" has often carried negative connotations, but it typically refers to those who "tinker" or alter technology to create new things. Steven Levy outlined the principles of hacker ethics in 1984, arguing that computers can also be used for creative purposes, and that the evaluation of hackers should be based on the quality of their work rather than on gender, race, nationality, or other characteristics. Additionally, mastery of hacker skills is a prerequisite for becoming a hacker. While this last point may seem obvious, access to relevant technology, namely source code, is necessary for engaging in hacker activities. In other words, closed, proprietary, or otherwise protected technologies that prevent tinkering may be seen as unjust.
In fact, when faced with closed, proprietary, or otherwise protected technologies, hackers may attempt to circumvent or eliminate these restrictions. Sometimes this is done to demonstrate points about information security or to signal to others the complexity of their hacker activities. This signaling motivation is also recognized in the open-source software community (Lakhani and Wolf, 2005), especially because FLOSS programmers are interested in remixing, modifying, adapting, or creating something new from a given product. The same signaling motivation is also used to explain why programmers contribute to FLOSS projects. Lakhani and Wolf (2005) explain that signaling can occur at several levels. At a personal level, a hacker can demonstrate their skills to others through their hacker activities. Hackers may also use this signaling to convey their skills to potential employers in order to obtain paid work. If recognized in a broader community, effectively completing certain programming tasks can bring more job opportunities from companies seeking specific skills.
However, another form of signaling occurs between hacker groups. Hacker groups or collectives may disrupt services by shutting down websites or using other methods to demonstrate their power to others. This is often done out of a spirit of competition, but it may also be driven by a specific ideology. For example, there have been state-based hacker organizations in Syria, with the pro-Syrian government hacker group "Syrian Electronic Army" engaging in a hacker war with the hacker group "Free Syrian Army" (Fitzpatrick, 2012). In this case, hacker groups strategically attack the websites of their opponents to demonstrate the strength of their movement.
In a survey of individuals who identify as part of the hacker community, respondents cited their primary motivation for contributing to FLOSS development as a desire to challenge themselves and engage in creative work. This seems to support Levy's (1984) primary principles of hacker ethics: creativity and aesthetics. Weber's (2004) survey also found other motivations, including the belief that all software should be free, echoing the ideals of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. Weber's conclusion is that motivations are diverse, and these survey results should be placed in the appropriate context. For example, many contributors to FLOSS development do not publicly identify themselves or their institutional affiliations. In fact, a look at the contributors file for the Linux kernel development reveals that most contributors are listed as "unknown." This means that a significant portion of the FLOSS community chooses not to self-identify. Therefore, we must approach survey results that claim to represent the entire FLOSS community with a certain degree of skepticism.
For understanding the motivations of hackers and FLOSS contributors, signaling and creativity are undoubtedly important factors; however, I personally believe that Christopher Kelty's research is most compelling for the cultural significance of free software and FLOSS production. Kelty (2008) positions free software as a recursive public, defining it as:
"A public. It is extremely concerned with the maintenance and improvement of its material and practical means as a public—technologies, laws, practices, and conceptual means—and is an independent collective of other established forms of power, able to speak to existing forms of power by producing actual alternative solutions." (Kelty, 2008: 3).
In other words, in the process of actively contributing to FLOSS projects, FLOSS programmers are also actively creating, reconstructing, or reproducing the infrastructure that enables their activities. This concept has conceptual connections with other theories that view the commons as a process or a way of becoming (Dyer-Witheford, 2006; Linebaugh, 2008; Singh, 2017). Similarly, Rossiter and Zehle (2013) also argue that the commons is not simply "protected as a fragile heritage" to prevent enclosure, but must be actively constructed. The FLOSS community actively produces digital commons in the form of code and engages in production and licensing that allows users to use and adapt the code for their own purposes. There are many different forms of these alternative intellectual property licenses. The Copyleft license, initially widely used, is the GNU General Public License. Other notable examples include the Creative Commons license, which allows varying degrees of use of protected property under conditions set by the creator. For example, users can offer their creations for free and allow others to use them, with the condition that these users must attribute the original author.
Kelty (2008) further claims that FLOSS programmers "do not start from ideology, but come into contact with these ideologies through the practice of creating free software and its derivatives" (7-8). Coleman (2004) also expresses a similar viewpoint when discussing the "political agnosticism" of FLOSS. The complex power in this agnosticism arises from an external denial of specific political positions, although "political negation is cultural, articulated through a restatement of the principle of free speech, influenced by computer technology and expressed externally, thus constituting hacker values" (Coleman, 2004: 509). Coleman goes on to explain that the core ethical philosophy advocated by the FLOSS community is "dedicated to preventing the restriction of the freedom of others" (509). This open utilitarian ethical philosophy is necessary for FLOSS programmers to continue building the most advanced computer programs, as it is the ability to modify, adjust, and improve software that makes innovation in software development possible.
These principles and the external denial of specific political positions are to some extent the reason why the FLOSS community is able to attract such a large group of people. Of course, this does not mean that all members of the FLOSS community reject specific political ideologies. Eben Moglen's (2003) "dotCommunist Manifesto" launched a battle against the private property system. In fact, he presents seven principles for the struggle for "freedom of speech, freedom of knowledge, and freedom of technology," and concludes by explaining how this struggle will bring about a more just society:
Abolish all forms of private property in thought and knowledge.
Revoke all exclusive licenses, privileges, and rights to use the electromagnetic spectrum. Abolish all permanent rights to occupy electromagnetic frequency channels.
Develop electromagnetic spectrum facilities that enable equal exchange for everyone.
Develop socially public computer programs and make all other forms of software, including their "genetic information," namely source code, public property.
Fully respect the freedom of all speech, including technical speech.
Protect the dignity of creative labor.
Ensure that all people have equal and free access to public creative information and all educational resources in all areas of the public education system.
We want to launch a revolution of liberating human concepts. We want to overthrow the current intellectual property system and establish a truly just society. In this society, the freedom of each individual's development is also the freedom of all. (Moglen, 2003)
Similarly, Dmitry Kleiner's (2010) "Telekomunist Manifesto" outlines proposals for developing the politics of the networked working class. His "venture communism" and "Copyfarleft" licensing system make specific proposals for developing alternative options within the existing framework, but guided by radical politics. Both of these proposals aim to uphold and protect property collectively owned by independent producers, free from capitalist exploitation or absorption.
Therefore, overall, the FLOSS community has tremendous value for software production. The works discussed above, especially those of Kelty (2008) and Coleman (2004; 2013), are among the best for understanding the cultural significance of FLOSS and the ethical values of the FLOSS community. However, what happens when the specific cultural, political, and economic values of the FLOSS community intersect with the cycle of capital accumulation? This remains an urgent question. This is also one of the contradictions that Kleiner (2010) attempts to address when proposing alternative solutions. Additionally, how does the FLOSS community negotiate and demonstrate its dual position of advocating open knowledge and market success? Alison Powell (2012; 2016; 2018) is the best representative exploring the complex dynamics in this regard. When discussing how participants in peer production communities negotiate ethical visions of mutual competition for projects, Powell (2018) argues that they often adopt "operational pragmatics" to demonstrate the reasonableness of various design decisions. In doing so, participants blur the distinction between advocating open knowledge and market success, even if these distinctions seem incompatible. In fact, both are seen as "good" or virtuous and play a role as "regimes of justification" in making relevant design decisions (Powell, 2018: 514).
So, how do we understand the ways in which the complex and intertwined cultural differences are negotiated within peer production communities, and their intersection with the cycle of capital accumulation? If peer production communities want to design products that can achieve market success, could they potentially be exploited by capital? After all, businesses are very interested in harnessing the productive power of the FLOSS community. The next section will discuss the various ways in which companies engage with the FLOSS community in theoretical terms. However, the next chapter will delve into the specific dynamics from the perspective of capitalism, digital labor, and the commons, while exploring how exploitation occurs when capital and the commons intersect.
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