Thursday, May 1, 2008
How is Open Source Work (as an example of community produsage) different from Commercial Production?
The key characteristics of open source programming enable it to liberate consumers through providing them access, giving them the power to collaborate and build on the work of others.
The Four Freedoms, as defined by Stallman, provide the framework to understand how open source software can be aligned with community produsage as opposed to commercial production, purely created for economic gain. In summary, the Freedoms describe the free software movement and the benefits that communities can gain from software architecture which encourages shared ownership. They are outlined below:
Freedom 0 - Personal motives
Giving publics the right to run software as they wish.
Freedom 1 - Helping yourself
Adapting the software for your needs.
Freedom 2 - Helping your neighbour
Allowing for the copy and distribution of the updated software.
Freedom 4 - Helping your community
Freedom to improve the software and redistribute this for the overall benefit of the community.
The key assumptions underpinning the open source framework are that; everyone has a contribution to make, experimentation is encouraged, people will contribute if it is easy and beneficial to do so, and most importantly - that shared ownership is established.
Through sharing ownership, the commercial goals traditionally aimed for by proprietary software developers cannot be achieved, with open source software providing a free alternative to informed and proactive online communities.
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2 comments:
Natalie, personally I think you've nailed it. My only constructive criticism is that the differences between open source production and commercial production extend far beyond Stallman's four freedoms. Think "counter copy-right", think market forces and the driving factors behind these two types of production.
Hullo!
Nice profile picture. Very shiny. ^_^
My main problem with open source (which I actually touched on a bit in my own blog post) is that my own capitalist tendencies seem to get in the way. People want to get paid for what they do, otherwise there's no incentive for working on the open source. However, with something like Mozilla Firefox, it actually proves that through community participation, you can really make a difference.
However, that ad by Microsoft on the lecture slides this morning isn't too far off. :P
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