[Themaintainers] The historical (and ethical) context of the Open Source movement

[Lachlan Musicman]

Yep, can state absolutely that my interest in FOSS 25 years ago came
directly from an interest in anarchism. The Debian social contract made the
choice of my first OS flavour easy. I spent my time within the anarchist
movement spreading the word and discovering these online/technical worlds,
including helping to build Indymedia and later Engagemedia - and helping to
implement technical solutions to communications problems experienced at
events like the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, the Melbourne WEF protests in
2000 and The Woomera Breakout in 2002. We were political - reporting and
editorializing on protests in the morning, cooking with Food not Bombs
during the afternoon, coding at night.

I would echo the recommendation for Gabrielle Coleman's Coding Freedom
(available for free as PDF
https://gabriellacoleman.org/Coleman-Coding-Freedom.pdf ) and would add
Neal Stephenson's "In the beginning was the command line" (
http://cristal.inria.fr/~weis/info/commandline.html ) and "Mother Earth,
Mother board" (https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ )

I got there via Levy's Hackers and the stories of Stallman et al from the
60s-80s which I read in high school around 1986-7. My politics have matured
since then - I haven't been on the same page as ESR ever, although I did
like his Cathedral and the Bazaar (I'm an anarchist, of course I would),
and Stallman is a sexist jerk for all his other achievements.



On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 03:40, Don Goodman-Wilson <don at maintainerati.org>
wrote:

> Howdy everyone!
>
> As some of you may know, for the last year or so I've been undertaking a
> critical look at the Open Source software movement. For those at MIII's
> software track or recap, you'll be familiar with many of the issues that
> maintainers face—insufficient resources, feeling taken advantage of,
> burnout—and the infrastructural problems that come with unpaid labor under
> these conditions.
>
> I've recently argued that there are larger, more fundamental problems with
> Open Source as an institution (
> https://don.goodman-wilson.com/posts/open-source-is-broken/ — warning,
> this essay really wants a lot of heavy-handed editing; more streamlined
> version that I presented at a recent conference should be online soon, and
> I can share that here when it's on YouTube).
>
> One of the most common responses I've received is that I am attempting to
> "inject politics" into OSS, an inherently apolitical endeavour. I've
> responded by saying that my understanding is that OSS was, at least at the
> beginning, part of a larger movement that saw the emancipatory potential of
> technology, and believed that universal access to technology would liberate
> and empower all humans. OSS's goals of maximizing distribution was a tool
> used to achieve that aim, not the goal in and of itself.
>
> I've started digging into this history, some of which I knew from living
> through it, and some of which is very new to me. I believe there is an
> important story to be told about the origins of Open Source that my peers
> and colleagues are largely unaware of, and that understanding this context
> can help unlock the answers to questions I'm asking about the path forward.
> I want to tell this story.
>
> I could use your help! I'm looking for your opinions, your lived
> experience, and your insight. (This is also my first time undertaking an
> intellectual project of this scale (which isn't _huge_, but it's not small
> either) since my dissertation, so advice and support is also very welcome
> :D)
>
> Don GOODMAN-WILSON
> Maintainerati Board mail: don at maintainerati.org
> twitter: @DEGoodmanWilson <https://twitter.com/DEGoodmanWilson>
> cal: calendly.com/degoodmanwilson/
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>


-- 
------
"The urgent need now is for a working-class politics that doesn’t love
work."

Cybergothic Acid Communism Now
Sarah Jaffe  / @sarahljaffe
https://communemag.com/cybergothic-acid-communism-now/
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