Digital Tipping Point: Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist studying the Free Open Source Software movement 06
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Digital Tipping Point: Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist studying the Free Open Source Software movement 06
- Publication date
- 2004
- Publisher
- DTP Crew
This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. Thanks to Thomas King, a writer for Linux.com and LXer, for doing the rough editing for this series of interview segments!
This series of interview segments features anthropologist Gabriella Coleman. You might think that anthropologist are only useful for studying bones of old, forgotten cultures, but you would be wrong. As this series of 10 interview segments shows, we can learn a lot about modern cultures and subcultures from anthropologists.
Gabriella is not a computer scientist, but she does a great job of gaining enough computer science knowledge to understand what members of the Free Open Source Software movement are saying to each other. Her interviews are fascinating, because she spends much of her time thinking and talking about how people in the Free Open Source Software movement have created norms and established trust. These are really important issues, for several reasons. First, Free Open Source Software establishes the basic infrastructure for hundreds of billions of dollars in commerce every year. The Internet basically runs on Free Open Source Software, as does Google, Facebook, and most other such businesses. The US National Security Agency relies on GNU-Linux to run its computers, as does the US military. Huge civil bodies such as the City of Munich and the Region of Extremadura, Spain, rely on it. Second, Free Open Source Software is very international, as Gabriella points out, so what we learn from Free Open Source Software about collaboration can help humanity manage our complex international relations more smoothly in other areas as well.
In segment 05 (Tape 106~005), Gabriella continues on with a thought from segment 04. She is talking about Steven Levy's book, "Hackers". She says that in an appendix at the end of the book, Stallman says that he thinks he is the last hacker. He thought that the hacker culture was dying, due to the lockdown that was creeping to the computer software industry. [In fact, Stallman says in his DTP interview, and elsewhere, that he started the Free Software movement to stop the death of hacker culture). Gabriella says that although the law was causing some of Stallman's problems, he used the law in a very "hackish" way to solve the problem. Stallman used copyright law to invert the way that copyright law applied to software, through the GPL, which is the license underlying GNU-Linux, which many people just call Linux. In doing so, Stallman created the conditions by which the hacker ethic could live on.
Continuing with segment 05, Gabriella says that as of the time that this footage was shot, hacker culture became much more politicized, due to massive changes in intellectual property law, such as patents and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). In their response to these challenges, hackers (software developers) have become as much legal actors as technical agents. But the hackers legal and political activism has given them much more autonomy than other professional groups. Medical doctors, for example, are constrained more narrowly by interests such as insurance groups. Also, medical doctors don't volunteer their labor on the massive scale that hackers do. The hackers activism helps create the trust and group cohesiveness needed for them to maintain control over their profession and the Free Open Source Software movement to the extent that they do.
In segment 06 (Tape 106~006), Gabriella Coleman says that Alexis de Tocqueville was surprised by the degree of volunteerism that he found when he made his famous tour of the young United States. She says that hackers have greatly extended the power of volunteerism, and have mixed it with commercial endeavors.
She then moves to the topic of sustainability of the Free Open Source Software movement in the face of such large volunteer contributions. She says that Free Open Source Software has proven itself to be viable over the long-temr, and that it is actually because of the voluntary nature of Free Open Source Software contributions that the movement is so enduring. She says that her research found that software developers experienced a great deal of personal alienation at being cut off from their work product when they work at commercial companies if the company goes bust or if the project on which they are working gets shelved. Developers feel attached to their work, and they want to continue it or build on it. Doing so is difficult when developers work at commercial companies, because they don't own their work. With Free Open Source Software, the developers own their work even after leaving the company, because the code is licensed to the world. No one company owns it. This dynamic provides lots of satisfaction to the developers. She says that developers make the analogy of their work as a tree which could get cut down for no reason after years of attention from the developer, _if_ the project is a closed proprietary project.
She say that developers also like to know that their work is being used. They like the interaction that they get with users and other developers. Even bug reports, which can be looked at as reports of flaws in the code, are welcome to developers, because it tells them that their code is being used.
This footage is our raw rough-cut footage. It lacks transitions, music, special effectsor finish rendering. It is our "source code". Please feel free to rip, mix and burn this footage consistent with our Creative Commons license as disclosed on this page.
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv105_pa_17_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_005.ogg (segment 01)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv105_pa_17_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_006.ogg (segment 02)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_003.ogg (segment 03)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_004.ogg (segment 04)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_005.ogg (segment 05)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_006.ogg (segment 06)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_007.ogg (segment 07)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_008.ogg (segment 08)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv107_pa_19_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_001.ogg (segment 09)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv107_pa_19_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_002.ogg (segment 10)
If you like this segment, please consider typing up a summary for it and emailing that summary to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt@gmail.com. Your work will be credited and posted on this page.
The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt@gmail.com.
Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here:
http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_106
and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under: Segment 006, Gabriella Coleman
You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:
http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Thanks for viewing our video!
This series of interview segments features anthropologist Gabriella Coleman. You might think that anthropologist are only useful for studying bones of old, forgotten cultures, but you would be wrong. As this series of 10 interview segments shows, we can learn a lot about modern cultures and subcultures from anthropologists.
Gabriella is not a computer scientist, but she does a great job of gaining enough computer science knowledge to understand what members of the Free Open Source Software movement are saying to each other. Her interviews are fascinating, because she spends much of her time thinking and talking about how people in the Free Open Source Software movement have created norms and established trust. These are really important issues, for several reasons. First, Free Open Source Software establishes the basic infrastructure for hundreds of billions of dollars in commerce every year. The Internet basically runs on Free Open Source Software, as does Google, Facebook, and most other such businesses. The US National Security Agency relies on GNU-Linux to run its computers, as does the US military. Huge civil bodies such as the City of Munich and the Region of Extremadura, Spain, rely on it. Second, Free Open Source Software is very international, as Gabriella points out, so what we learn from Free Open Source Software about collaboration can help humanity manage our complex international relations more smoothly in other areas as well.
In segment 05 (Tape 106~005), Gabriella continues on with a thought from segment 04. She is talking about Steven Levy's book, "Hackers". She says that in an appendix at the end of the book, Stallman says that he thinks he is the last hacker. He thought that the hacker culture was dying, due to the lockdown that was creeping to the computer software industry. [In fact, Stallman says in his DTP interview, and elsewhere, that he started the Free Software movement to stop the death of hacker culture). Gabriella says that although the law was causing some of Stallman's problems, he used the law in a very "hackish" way to solve the problem. Stallman used copyright law to invert the way that copyright law applied to software, through the GPL, which is the license underlying GNU-Linux, which many people just call Linux. In doing so, Stallman created the conditions by which the hacker ethic could live on.
Continuing with segment 05, Gabriella says that as of the time that this footage was shot, hacker culture became much more politicized, due to massive changes in intellectual property law, such as patents and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). In their response to these challenges, hackers (software developers) have become as much legal actors as technical agents. But the hackers legal and political activism has given them much more autonomy than other professional groups. Medical doctors, for example, are constrained more narrowly by interests such as insurance groups. Also, medical doctors don't volunteer their labor on the massive scale that hackers do. The hackers activism helps create the trust and group cohesiveness needed for them to maintain control over their profession and the Free Open Source Software movement to the extent that they do.
In segment 06 (Tape 106~006), Gabriella Coleman says that Alexis de Tocqueville was surprised by the degree of volunteerism that he found when he made his famous tour of the young United States. She says that hackers have greatly extended the power of volunteerism, and have mixed it with commercial endeavors.
She then moves to the topic of sustainability of the Free Open Source Software movement in the face of such large volunteer contributions. She says that Free Open Source Software has proven itself to be viable over the long-temr, and that it is actually because of the voluntary nature of Free Open Source Software contributions that the movement is so enduring. She says that her research found that software developers experienced a great deal of personal alienation at being cut off from their work product when they work at commercial companies if the company goes bust or if the project on which they are working gets shelved. Developers feel attached to their work, and they want to continue it or build on it. Doing so is difficult when developers work at commercial companies, because they don't own their work. With Free Open Source Software, the developers own their work even after leaving the company, because the code is licensed to the world. No one company owns it. This dynamic provides lots of satisfaction to the developers. She says that developers make the analogy of their work as a tree which could get cut down for no reason after years of attention from the developer, _if_ the project is a closed proprietary project.
She say that developers also like to know that their work is being used. They like the interaction that they get with users and other developers. Even bug reports, which can be looked at as reports of flaws in the code, are welcome to developers, because it tells them that their code is being used.
This footage is our raw rough-cut footage. It lacks transitions, music, special effectsor finish rendering. It is our "source code". Please feel free to rip, mix and burn this footage consistent with our Creative Commons license as disclosed on this page.
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv105_pa_17_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_005.ogg (segment 01)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv105_pa_17_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_006.ogg (segment 02)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_003.ogg (segment 03)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_004.ogg (segment 04)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_005.ogg (segment 05)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_006.ogg (segment 06)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_007.ogg (segment 07)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_008.ogg (segment 08)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv107_pa_19_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_001.ogg (segment 09)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv107_pa_19_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_002.ogg (segment 10)
If you like this segment, please consider typing up a summary for it and emailing that summary to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt@gmail.com. Your work will be credited and posted on this page.
The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt@gmail.com.
Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here:
http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_106
and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under: Segment 006, Gabriella Coleman
You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:
http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Thanks for viewing our video!
Credits
Please give attribution for this snip to DigitalTippingPoint.com
For credits for this segment and all segments for the DTP main film, please go to this website:
http://digitaltippingpoint.com/?q=node/12
- Contact Information
- Christian Einfeldt, einfeldt at g mail dot com
- Addeddate
- 2008-10-02 05:05:47
- Closed captioning
- no
- Color
- color
- Identifier
- e-dv106_pa_18_gabriella_coleman_foss_anthropol_006.ogg
- Sound
- sound
- Year
- 2004
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