Two bits : the cultural significance of free software / Christopher M. Kelty.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kelty, Christopher M., 1972-

Series:

Experimental futures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Information society.

Open source software--Social aspects.

Open source software.

Social aspects.

Physical Description:

xvi, 378 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2008.

Summary:

In Two Bits, Christopher M. Kelty investigates the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software but also music, film, science, and education. Free Software is a set of practices devoted to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made openly and freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. Kelty explains how these specific practices have reoriented the relations of power around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge. He also makes an important contribution to discussions of public spheres and social imaginaries by demonstrating how Free Software is a "recursive public"-a public organized around the ability to build, modify, and maintain the very infrastructure that gives it life in the first place.

Drawing on ethnographic research that took him from an Internet healthcare start-up company in Boston to media labs in Berlin to young entrepreneurs in Bangalore, Kelty describes the technologies and the moral vision that bind together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and other Free Software advocates. In each case, he shows how their practices and way of life include not only the sharing of software source code but also ways of conceptualizing openness, writing copyright licenses, coordinating collaboration, and proselytizing. By exploring in detail how these practices came together as the Free Software movement from the 1970s to the 1990s, Kelty also considers how it is possible to understand the new movements emerging from Free Software.

Contents:

Geeks and recursive publics

Protestant reformers, polymaths, transhumanists

The movement

Sharing source code

Conceiving open systems

Writing copyright licenses

Coordinating collaborations

"If we succeed, we will disappear"

Reuse, modification, and the nonexistence of norms.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [349]-366) and index.

ISBN:

9780822342427

0822342421

9780822342649

0822342642

OCLC:

183914703