Open Source Group E \ Sune \ Tue \ Malene \ Nanna \

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Open Source

Group E\ Sune \ Tue \ Malene \ Nanna \

Proprietary vs. open source software

• Maximize value for shareholders

• Hidden code– Easy to hide features


• Diverse agendas• Open code• No hidden features

• Free• Reduces imbalance

• More ubiquitous: Free of special interests more important

Freedom of creation vs. Control of consumption

• Distribution no longer difficult– Bigger threat– Copyright, patent more important• new laws, technologies for this• limit creativity, mass criminalization

• Industries fight these changes– should rather adapt and see new possibilities


Uses of creative commons license

• Cooperative projects– Best when modular• OOP• Wikipedia

• Long lasting acess to wide audience– Non mainstream: earns little on sale anyway

• Niches, but knowledge is being accumulated


Open Source problems

• External– DRM– Patents– Big corporations

owning work


• Internal• Internet users not

representative• Single users point of view• ”stable” versions

• Nonlive artists• Cultural flatrate• Transparency• Fairness• Political will

• Openess– Free or?

• Closed-ness?– Proprietary• Technical• Legal• Commercial

– Windows– Adobe– iWork


• UNIX– Standard OS– ”IBM and the seven dwarfs”• HP, Honeywell, Control Data,

General Electric, NCR, RCA, Univac.• From Big heavy computers• Then smaller faster ones.• ”Gang war”


• Windows• TCP/IP– Availability– Modifiability– Serendipity– Link layer– Internet layer– Transport layer– Application layer

– Was it all a failure?Group E

\ Sune \ Tue \ Malene \ Nanna \

Geeks and recursive publics

• Geeks :There are also lawyers, politicians, sociologists, and economists who may not refer to themselves as geeks, but who care about the Internet just as other geeks do. By contrast “users” of the Internet, even those who use it eighteen out of twenty-four hours in a day to ship goods and play games, are not necessarily geeks by this characterization.

• The internet• Recursive publics• Sean and Adrian


• Geeks and the internet, Silk List:Like many similar communities of “digerati” during and after the dot.com boom, Silk-list constituted itself more or less organi- cally around people who “got it,” that is, people who claimed to understand the Internet, its transformative potential, and who had the technical skills to participate in its expansion.

• Geeks: Adrian and Sean, Hipsters in Berlin and programmers in Bangalore.

• Bind together by the internet.Group E


Christopher M. Kelty: Conceiving Open Systems

Chapter 6: Writing copyright licenses

OR: How James

Gosling totally stole

the work of Richard

Stallman!Group E


This is Richard Stallman

Founder of the GNU

General Public

License or ”GPL”


EMACS (Editing MACros)

Text editor +A principle interface to the operating system



Ivites users to contribute, extend and modify”EMACS Commune”

Writes ”GOSMACS”

Every modification must go through him – more a dictatorship than a commune

This is james gosling



James Gosling sells

GOSMACS to Unipress,

because he is tired of

maintaining the

developments (and

probably because he

wants the money)


Distinction:Free: everybody

can use the program without charge

Public domain: everybody can use and distribute the program without concerns of authorship


UNIX EMACS

Contains code marked:

”Copyright © James Gosling”!


”I had permission through my very good friend Fen Labalme!”


”Plus: Richard Stallman and others contributed to GOSMACS and James Gosling had no permission to sell it to Unipress in the first place!”


In one sentence: Stallman was using code from Gosling based on permission Gosling had given to Labalme, but Labalme had written code for Gosling which Gosling had commercialized without telling Labalme. Further, all of them were modifying software originally created by Stallman!


EMACS version 16

Re-writes the display code that Gosling claimed to own.

Result:

Q: Who is right – who is wrong – and why??


Q: How to face the problems with open source?

Documents

Open Source Group E \ Sune \ Tue \ Malene \ Nanna \