Readings due for today:
Adams, Clint – Blog entry http://xana.scru.org/xana2/ranticore/debknights/
This is rant about the Debian project that is from the inside.
Coleman, Biella – “The (copylefted) Source Code for the Ethical Production of Information Freedom”
Gabriella talks about a commonality among hackers – the love of information freedom. She writes that by nature, hackers have a lust to know – a “pursuit of knowledge…[that] is a basic undeniable element of computer hacking”. She says that hacking is political just by what it is.
Fogel, Karl – “Producing Open Source Software” Chapter 4 – Social and Political Infrastructure http://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#social-infrastructure
As classmate Max writes in his paper,
Author Karl Fogel analyzes the power structures for how open source software projects are handled, maintained, and litigated.Fogel writes about who is in charge (the Benevolent Dictator), forking, and voting, and how these elements work together.
Shirky, Clay – “Failure for Free”
Classmate Miranda writes about Shirky's chapter saying,
...various computer-related programs/advancement are discussed in conversation with this idea of failure as a free (and essentially positive) outcome of programming.Shirky relates how companies cannot afford failure because it costs them money but the value of failure in open source system is great.
______________________________________
For today’s class, Monday November 10, we were fortunate enough to have Karl Fogel as a guest speaker.
We began class by a discussion about governance and conflict in different software projects, especially Debian.
Then we went right into Questions & Answers:
Miranda’s question was How does one become a Benevolent Dictator?
As Fogel writes in his chapter,
As a general rule, if it's simply obvious to everyone who should be the BD, then that's the way to go.
Often times, the benevolent dictator founded the project. They get authority by having authority.
If people disagree, they have the option to go on with the project anyway or fork a part of it on their own. Rarely do people leave.
When there is a disagreement about decisions being made – such as what bug tracker to use, you can use a different one and see how many people rather use yours. Overtime, you can see who gets more volume.
We then took this example and related it to our class. If one student did not like the blog server we were using, they could copy it and then put it onto a completely new blog server. Our professor could then see who prefers which blog but could not give an “F” to people who choose to use the new one. There is a general societal agreement, as there is with choosing a B.D.
What lessons from free software models can be seen in terms of governance?
Free software projects operate like oxygen in our society – you can take as much as you want but there is still plenty left. Free software projects have a commitment to transparency and accountability. There is a value in making things available in a technologically convenient way. Convenient transparency is not taking hold in our government. For example, newspapers like the New York Times now show visual graphics that make it easier. Police have crime maps online.
Then the comment was made that police have authority over what is the best crime map but in free software you can fork. Fogel responded by saying that you are forking the thing that is governed but not the government. Governments are not meant to be forked – “Government is the decider”.
We discussed two examples of free software programs that have similar government procedures:
Subversion – this is a free software program that is key to combining and working on things. It shows the history of the edits and syncs changes rather than make it more complicated and jumbled (like a history on Wikipedia).
Subversion has a self-selected group of editors responsible for the reputation of program. People work on what they want to work on because what motivates them interests them.
Apache – Apache is web server and big foundation. They have special committees in every project and each committee has a chair that represents the project. In practice, they rarely use their committees.
One issue Fogel writes about is the idea of forks.
One student asked: how much of the community leaves? Where do attitudes change? Many hackers work on both versions, the fork and the original. They do not necessarily need to choose one. The attitudes of those left depend on who has left – if the three best hackers left, that would be an issue.
Fogel also spends a lot of time in his chapter discussing voting.
If there is arguing, the threat of a vote is always there. In the history of Subversion, there have only been two votes. Usually they run on consensus. Voting is seen as a threat, which is why it is so important. It is so frowned upon but it works as a force.
There are many different voting systems but one that Fogel writes about is approval voting, which he says is much better than how we vote for president.
A good choice in most cases is approval voting, whereby each voter can vote for as many of the choices on the ballot as he likes. Approval voting is simple to explain and to count, and unlike some other methods, it only involves one round of voting.
Does Debian want people who will work a lot? Shirky writes,
…a programmer who has only one good idea, ever, is a distinctly bad hire(for a company like Microsoft). He goes on to say,
The development of Linux can take a good idea from anyone, and frequently does.
Fogel responded that yes, Debian wants people that will work a lot but you can also get your work included in other ways. You can give your work to a full Debian member who has gone through the test and they can put it on. This creates classes of people.
What happens when you meet outside of the computer?
Programmers do meet a fair amount. People who have met are more accommodating to each other – there is a social impact in the way one might expect. In metropolitan areas like New York, Boston and San Francisco, they hang out together a lot and not just people who work on the same project but other projects as well because they are part of similar endeavors. Having met the person makes you want to fix a bug faster if they tell you there is one, for example.
What’s in store for the future?
Free software is beyond software. It will change the way people think about shareable things. Right now there are more geeks and hackers working than ever in these realms but there are still skeptics that believe the newcomers do not have the skills of the older guys.
Fogel introduced the class to the phrase “Eternal September”, which refers to the wave of new users that arrives every September when kids get on the internet at school for the first time, unaware of ‘Netquette’ (Core rules of Netiquette).