inscribing freedom: the politics of artefacts in the ... · starting from this point of view, we...
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IMPORTANT NOTICE: THIS PAPER IS A WORK IN PROGRESS, DON'T QUOTE WITHOUT
PERMISSION.
Inscribing Freedom: the Politics of Artefacts in the OpenSolaris Community
Abstract: If Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) success a political or technical aim?This is
the question surrounding the distinction between the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source
Initiative, according to the views by Richard M. Stallman and Eric S. Raymond: free software is a social
movement, open source is a development methodology. The biggest part of the academic research on
FLOSS has taken for granted this difference, without considering the complexity of the phenomenon of
FLOSS development.
The aim of this article is, starting from the point of view of a study of freedom in FLOSS, double faced:
on one side, distinguish theoretically a set of practices and activities, I call “practices of freedom”,
contributing to a picture of FLOSS development as a complex phenomenon, both political and technical;
on the other side, to empirically analyse almost one of these practices, the construction of legal artefacts,
and show how these practices, with the reduction of the distinction between user and developers, is able
to give an enriched image to the concepts of inscription and description.
So, the article will be so structured: a brief review of the positions by Stallman and Raymond,
underlining the rhetorical construction of the difference between Free Software and Open Source; a brief
review of the literature on FLOSS, with the explication of how the Stallman/Raymond debate has been
taken for granted by academics; an introduction of a practicebased view on FLOSS, able to overcome
the simplified visions brought by the dichotomy; an empirical discussion, with the presentation of the
construction of a legal artefact in a community, the OpenSolaris one, which is very interesting, because
of the intermingling of different elements, like sponsorship by a corporation, and so on.
In conclusion, a theoretical summary of how the practices of freedom contribute to different inscriptions
and description of freedom, and how this inscriptions are negotiated between developers who are also
users, is presented, with the aim to contribute both to the study of FLOSS and to the STS field.
Keywords: freedom, practices, inscription/description, actornetwork theory.
Introduction, or the relevance of the study of freedom in FLOSS
FLOSS development has been the object of an increasing of academic interest in last years, because
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both of its peculiar way of developing software and selforganize, and of its political and economic
character (Feller, Fitzgerald, 2002). As I will show, this two poles, the technical and organizational
one, and the political one, have been taken distinguished in analysis, discarding the possibility to
grasp the phenomenon in its complexity (Coleman, Hill, 2004). The trial of this article is to avoid this
problem, and to propose conceptual tools, coming from the Science, Technology and Society lexicon,
able to allow researchers to approach the phenomenon with a view reducing the number of a priori
assumptions.
Starting from this point of view, we have to recognize that, yet from the origins of the term “free
software”, the presence of different freedoms, sharing code, improving and redistribute it, lays at the
core of the self definition of the movement (FSF, 2004). At the same time, these freedoms have
overcome the boundaries of software development, to enter, for example, the social world of the
creation of art (Lessig, 2004). So, considering freedom as the central topic of an analysis of FLOSS is
able to connect this analysis both with the origins and history of the FLOSS development, and with its
future in connection with other social worlds. Questions remain, like “how to study freedom in
FLOSS?which kinds of freedom emerge?”. With this article I will try to give some possible answers.
The contestation of code: freedom, community and complexity
Richard M. Stallman and Eric S. Raymond, spokesmen of different organizations, the Free Software
Foundation and the Open Source Initiative1, bring two different views of the goals and means of
FLOSS. According to David Berry (2004), I will call this conflict “the contestation of code”: “The
two Internet – based movements attempt to fix the polysemic elements within an order of discourse
surrounding the production and interpretation of computer based programming code in order to
establish a closure” (65). This contestation is a rhetoric one, and it is connected with development
practices and activities quite commons between actors who recognize themselves in these different
movement. The principal character of this debate is understandable if we take a look at some of the
claims of the two hackers:
“The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today separate movements with
different views and goals, although we can and do work together on some practical projects. [...] The
fundamental difference between the two movements is in their values, their ways of looking at the world.
For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical
question, not an ethical one. [...] Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social
movement [...] For the Free Software movement, nonfree software is a social problem and free software
1Richard M. Stallman is actually the FSF leader, Eric S. Raymond was president of OSI since 1998 until December
2004.
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is the solution” (Stallman, 2002)
“To pragmatists the GPL is important as a tool, rather than as an end in itself. Its main value is not as a
weapon against 'hoarding', but as a tool for encouraging software sharing and the growth of bazaarmode
development communities” (Raymond, 2000)
“An entirely sufficient case for opensource development rests on its engineering and economic
outcomes – better quality, higher reliability, lower costs, and increased choice” (Raymond, 1999)
As we can see, on one side freedom, inscribed in licenses, is prosecuted and recognized as an enabler
of better outcomes, technical, economical and organizational; on the other side, it is considered a
political goal; a pragmatic view against a political one. If we consider the contribution by STS, we can
see that the technical outcomes and the political ones can't be considered separate (Winner, 1986;
Joerges, 1999; Latour, 2004). The same can be told in the Stallman's and Raymond's views: if the Free
Software movement and the GNU project started with the aim of preserving the programming
practices carried on at the MIT AI Lab (Levy, 1994; Moody, 2002), than the license is an enabler of
this continuity of practices; at the same time, the same birth of the Open Source Initiative is to be
connected with the political goal of expanding the boundaries of free software, in a more marketing
oriented flavour (Raymond, 1998). So, the distinction between freedom as an enabler and freedom as
a goal, assume a different character: what has to be explained is not if Free Software and Open Source
differs, but in which ways the meanings of freedom differ. At the same time, people sustaining the
different views, with blurred boundaries, are involved together in practical activities and projects, so
the question can be shifted another time: how the different meanings of freedom are enacted in
different development activities?To try to give an answer to this question, I need to understand which
contribution, in the academic literature about FLOSS, can be appropriate to this task.
The previous image of a dichotomy in the consideration of freedom is useful in order to understand
the academic debate on FLOSS, and to select which are the contribution allowing a discussion about
FLOSS with the lowest number of a priori assumptions, making the complexities of the phenomenon
arise, as well as the ordering strategies trying to simplify the complexities (Law, Mol, 2002). With this
aim in mind, and taking freedom as central, I can consider the academic debate on FLOSS as signed
by three main kinds of analysis: these considering freedom as a goal, making that a fixed character of
the hacker culture, both at the individual level (i.e. Lakhani, Wolf, 2005) and at the collective level
(i.e. Kelty, 2001); these considering freedom as an enabler, the independent variable, with
consequences, for example, on the structure of communities (i.e. Crowston, Scozzi, 2002), on the
business model (i.e. Hecker, 1999), and on the computer science field (i.e. Gacek, Arief, 2004); these
considering freedom as one of the elements participating to the complexities of the FLOSS social
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world (i.e. Lin, 2004), social world interpreted as a fluid, where stability and blackboxing need to be
explained (Law, Mol, 1994). The argument overcoming the dichotomy goal/enabler in the reading of
the Stallman/Raymond debate can be easily translated to the discussion about academic literature: the
presence of practical activities involving different actors, with different views on the FLOSS social
world, make fluid the hacker culture, business models, communities structures, and computer science
concepts. There is no a single and fixed meaning for freedom (as well as for the other elements
involved in FLOSS communities life), there is no a set of a priori variables which effects needs to be
explained; there are practices, courses of action, controversies, which need to be deployed and traced
(Latour, 2005). This is the point of view I take, and through which I will try to describe a small
portion of a community's life.
A practicebased perspective on FLOSS
As argued before, the dichotomies considering elements fixed, with a priori assumptions, have to be
overcome. This kind of renewal in thinking about FLOSS can be embraced focusing on the practices
of FLOSS, practices which connect the different actors involved. According to Gherardi (2005: 35
36), we can look at a practice considering that:
– it has an holistic and qualitative aspect: it is recognized as a whole, but it is differently performed
in different situations and organizations
– it has a temporal dimension: it is reproduced and the reproduction allows its recognizability
– it is socially recognized, there is an institutional system recognizing and sustaining that
– it is a mode of ordering the world, temporarily limited
Starting from these considerations, we can develop a theoretical discussion on a practicebased
approach to FLOSS, and I will try to envision some characteristics of this approach in the following
lines.
The starting point of this kind of analysis is simple: FLOSS communities produce software. They do
so engaging resources, creating, manipulating and sustaining software components, development
artefacts, and documents. According with Scacchi (2005), we can call the web of relationships
connecting people, resources and artefacts, “socio – technical interaction network”. With this concept,
the materiality of FLOSS development, as well as the centrality of practical activities, are
strengthened. At the same time, not only the software outcome is underlined, but also the artefacts
participating in the development (text editor, versioning systems, etc...) and the documents related to
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the community (programming guidelines, software licenses, charters, procedures, etc...). So, the stress
on the development practices and on the networks, or actornetworks (Latour, 2005), of FLOSS
development allows to consider not only the human participants to the communities, but also the non
– human ones.
The attention to practices, not only allows the introduction of symmetry between humans and non
humans entities (Latour, 1993), but also allows the connection between knowing and doing (Gherardi,
2005: 41): practising FLOSS development become a craftsman's work on software, freedom,
communities. Knowing and doing become the same, so understanding what developers do, and how
they do it, open spaces to the comprehension of what they know. At the core lays the production of the
material artefacts of FLOSS: is during this production that FLOSS developers do and know freedom,
computer science, communities. So, the attention to practice brings together knowing and doing,
human and nonhuman entities, and opens up the space for a reflection putting at the centre the
creation, manipulation and sustaining of the artefacts of FLOSS.
During these processes of creation, manipulation and sustaining, we can see what Madeleine Akrich
(1992: 208) called inscription, the act of inscribing in an artefact a framework of action which defines
“actors with specific tastes, competences, motives, aspirations, political prejudices, and the rest, and
assumes that morality, technology, science and economy will evolve in particular ways”. The
production of artefacts is connected to the sustaining and diffusion of views of the world, views
inscribed in the artefacts themselves. Inscription is an act of developers of technical objects, when
technology enters a specific context and situation with specific users, we can talk about description,
the making explicit of the relations inscribed in artefacts. I argue that, being the distinction between
user and developer confused in FLOSS, it is a very good field to go further in the study of inscriptions
and descriptions.
To summarize, I propose to put at the centre the practices of creation, manipulation and sustaining of
artefacts in FLOSS communities, with the sociotechnical interaction networks they mobilize, and to
consider that a way of doing and knowing freedom. At the same time, I argue that these relationships
with artefacts can be interpreted through the couple of concepts inscription/description, and that the
practices of FLOSS are hybrid, being partly practices of inscription and partly practices of de
scription, making from one side possible the expansion of the concepts proposed, from another side
understanding which kind of freedom, community, software development, and so on, are inscribed/de
scribed, and which entities are participating to these processes. I will call “practices of freedom” the
practices of inscription/description of freedom in FLOSS artefacts, and will try to trace their origin
and describe their ongoing. To do so, is necessary to introduce an empirical case, the construction of a
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concrete artefact.
The OpenSolaris Community
I've argued that following the practices of production of artefacts in FLOSS communities is
theoretically and empirically productive. In this part I will describe the discussions around one legal
artefact in a specific community, and connect that with the different meanings of freedom constructed
during the inscription. At the same time, the situation of being both developer and user of the artefact,
can be a possibility for expanding the use of the concepts of inscription/description.
The community I'm following and studying is the OpenSolaris one. This community opened with the
decision, by Sun Microsystems, Inc., to release part of its proprietary operating system, Solaris, under
an OSI approved license, the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Before the
official opening, the project lived a preopensourcing phase, with the involvement of organizations
and developers considered partner by Sun. During this phase, a governing board, called Community
Advisory Board (CAB) was set up, composed by five people: two Sun employees, two elected
between and by the participants to the preopensourcing phase, one choose by Sun between leading
developers in the open source social world.
I've followed the great part of the communities mailing lists, and the debates I will describe are
around the socalled OpenSolaris Charter, the document defining the passage of responsibility
between Sun and the community; these debates took place in the CAB mailing lists between August
2005 and February 2006, when the Charter was approved, both by the CAB and by Sun (see the
Charter text annexed). The document is particularly relevant, because it is the first step trying to
warranty one of the declared aim of Sun (2005): “Decisions within the project are made
independently from those concerning Sun's business. Sun's management controls the business aspects
of the Solaris product, but will not exert undue influence within the OpenSolaris community”
(emphasis added). Another relevant voice from Sun insiders, that by Goldman and Gabriel (2005)
underlined the relevance for companies wanting to embrace fruitfully the FLOSS social world of the
governance element: “governance has to do with how decisions are made about the workings of the
community” (p. 10). So, the Charter has to do with how decisions on the workings of the community
are made independently by the community itself. As I underlined, the Charter is the document setting
the basis of governance, and great part of issues related to that would be faced by another document,
the community “Constitution” (at the moment I'm writing it is incomplete). To clearly grasp and
expose the document and its construction, I will before analyse the text and later discuss the debates
surrounding it.
The first statement (number 0.) remembers the role of Sun: it provide the necessary resources for the
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birth of the community and what OpenSolaris means, “a certain subset of its Solaris Operating
System, known henceforth as OpenSolaris”, the potential receivers of these resources, “all”, the ways
through which the birth is possible, “under terms compatible with Open Source ideals”, and the goal
of the project, “an open and constructive development and dissemination of this code base”. In the
following part of 0. are listed the actions Sun conducted to warranty to participants the possibility to
reach the goal in the fixed way: create an OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB); grant it the necessary
power and rights to reach its goals; assign it a suitable number of members; establish a term for its
living and the time for the election of a new OGB. This description allow to identify which are the
participants to the yet born OpenSolaris Community, at least according to this document: Sun, the
governance Board (the CAB in the first period and the OGB later), the Open Source ideals, the code
base known as OpenSolaris. Sun, considered in the network of actors involved, seems to have a
peculiar and privileged role, because it is able to create more connections than the others, and because
it seems to be an obligatory pointofpassage (Callon, 1986) in the processes involving the other
actors.
The other parts of the document not only characterize in a deeper way the actors involved, introducing
also new ones, but also introducing connectors, mediators between actors. For example, statement 1.
introduce limits for the action of the OGB, the adherence to democratic principles, becoming
participants to the community, and the oblige to “represent the interests of the OpenSolaris
community”. So, the OGB is constituted as the spokesperson of the community, a relation is
constructed between OGB and the community, while the community and the OGB actions are
connected with democratic principles and the concept of democracy. This is strengthened by the
statement that the mediator between the participants to the community, the OGB, and other actors
involved is another document, the “Constitution”. The characteristics of this mediator, what it has to
do, or better, the guidelines for the writing of this text, are explicitly described in Section 2., which
introduces other participants, connectors and principles: the process to amend the Constitution itself;
the processes to determine OGB membership; recognized roles inside the community; rights and
responsibilities connected with each role; the methods of communication between the OGB and Sun;
methods and processes to solve controversies in the community; possible regulations connected to the
growth and development of the community; the constitution of other governing bodies, to execute part
of the Charter or of the Constitution. Not only we are assisting to the translation of democratic
principles in governance statements, but also the particular instantiation of the principles inscribed in
this text is participating to the ongoing construction of the same principles. As I will show, the role of
being both developers and users of this artefact mobilize sociocultural awareness (Hakken, 2003) on
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this principles during the artefact production: we are in front of one of what I call practice of freedom,
the inscription of freedom in artefacts involving the sociocultural rethinking of freedom itself. So, the
concept of freedom emerging is a fluid and relational one, connecting and mediating between
participants to the community, both human and nonhuman entities. In this sense, we can notice how
statements 4. and 11. attribute to Sun peculiar possibilities of action on the Charter and the
Constitution, modify and approved them which, from the point of view of the community, are
attributed to the OGB. So, Sun is not only a participant to the Community, but a special one, with
powers shared with the OGB, the governing body of the entire community. The other statements go on
in the characterizing work on the participants, especially the OGB and the CAB, but this is not the
place to expand this argument. More interesting is to reconstruct how this document has been
constructed, how negotiations brought to the final text and which were the meanings of freedom under
debate.
Toward the Charter: giving freedom different meanings
I've just claimed that the OpenSolaris Charter defines participants to the community, being they
humans, organizational bodies, source code or political values, some of their relations, and some of
the mediators connecting them. But the document has been discussed and the views of the world
inscribed in it have been subject to negotiations and debates. In this paragraph, I will describe how
this kind of debates took place, through which mediators, and which relations have been translated or
excluded; summarizing I will describe the sociotechnical interaction network surrounding this
activity.
The Charter writing took place mainly through the use of two different webbased technologies: the
cabdiscuss mailing list2 and a wiki hosted by the website Genunix3, through bandwidth and rack
space offered by the Internet Systems Consortium4. So, we can see how the construction of this
artefact involved different organizations, and resources. At the same time, the use of mailing list and
wiki, two asynchronous technologies, make possible for participants the performance of a practice of
reading, reflection and comment, with the possibility to suggest online modifications to the
circulating drafts. Contemporary, we have to notice that the use of webbased technologies restrict the
number of potential participants to people provided with an Internet connection, as well as the
knowledge of English language is required to understand, comment and modify the text. In this sense,
technologies in the sociotechnical interaction network of Charter writing are acting in choosing who
2 http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/forum.jspa?forumID=17
3 http://www.genunix.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
4 http://www.isc.org/index.pl
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is able to participate, excluding nonEnglish speakers and offline people.
The Charter writing had been considered one of the CAB tasks from the beginning of the project, in
spring 2005. After discussions inside the CAB, one of the nonSun member propose to the mailing
lists cabdiscuss, a preliminary draft of the document, in August 2005. This draft was so structured: an
historical introduction of the project; definitions making a difference between OpenSolaris and
Solaris; an introduction to the document; the goals of the document; a statement about the OGB
mission; the OGB legal status; its possibilities of action; the principal values of the project. As we can
see the differences between the first draft and the final document are a lot, both in terms of text length
(the first one is almost the double of the second one), and in terms of content. The process involved
different topics, for example the budget Sun has to assign to the community, or to the OGB. From this
point of view, we can notice that this kind of discussion make two different concept of independence
from Sun emerge, has shown by this two messages:
“I am opposed the board having a budget. There is no need. Facetoface meetings should not and can
not be a necessity, albiet they are nice. Travel should not be a prereq. Rewards should not be a monitary
nature. So on and so forth. How can a board be so adimate about being outside of Sun “control”, and yet
be standing in line for a budget? It is a direct conflict of interest”
[BR, cabdiscuss, 4th Sep 2005]
“The budget we are talking about in the charter is the entire OpenSolaris community budget. The OGB
would be responsible for managing whatever amount Sun placed within it. The alternative would be to
continue as we currently do and wait until after we make a decision to do something (like meet at
OSCON) and then ask Sun if it fits within someone else's budget. There are quarterly times when that
kind of operation doesn't work. [...] We simply want that decision to be made in advance and assigned to
a specific budget, since otherwise the project has to beg for spare money from marketing and
engineering each time an expenditure is considered.”
[RF, cabdiscuss, 6th Sep 2005]
As emerge, here the independence from Sun is declined in terms of a monetary and economic
freedom for the community. This freedom is considered in two divergent ways: having a budget, not
having a budget. The first one is valued in terms of fixing the relation between Sun and the
community in a predetermined budget, allowing the carry on of activities already performed (like
facetoface meetings, i.e. the one in Portland, Oregon, during OSCON 2005); the second one is
valued in terms of erasing this kind of connection between Sun and the community, a budget is not
need, facetoface meetings are not needed, rewards should be different from money. The discussion
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hadn't find a solution and the introduction of the draft of the document more similar to the final one
(December 2005) shifted it to the Constitution writing. But the issue of the relation between Sun and
the community didn't stop to the economic aspect, as we can see in this passage, taken from the first
document draft:
“the community would not be interested in the project if they felt that it was an extension of Sun
Corporate and the governing body was merely a puppet organization controlled by Sun. The community
at large must have a sense of ownership of the project, its decision making apparatus and its overall goals
and direction. They must experience a freedom from the constraints of a corporate cubicle or from
technical management who don't understand or appreciate the technicalities of the demanding work they
perform or the code they develop.”
[AH, cabdiscuss, 19th Aug 2005]
What we can find here is freedom of selforganizing both in decision making about goals and
direction, and about technical management. The independence from Sun acquire a strongest meaning,
involving the community feeling about being the owner of the project. As I told, this draft was
discussed until December 2005, when, with version 2.3 we assisted to a slowing in the debates,
mainly focused on the distinction between the Charter and the Constitution. In that period, a
participant not part of the CAB posted a messages with a new version of the document, close to the
final version:
“In an attempt to get the charter discussion moving along again, I'd like to submit a version XXX
authored. The goal of the charter, as I see it, is to delegate authority from Sun Microsystems to the larger
OpenSolaris community, in the form of its governing board. XXX's attempt is more formal than previous
versions, but is a draft that attempts to be precise in specifying the manner and expectations around that
delegation. Furthermore, it is attempting to make the discussion of how the governing board works part
of the constitutional discussion the board must have: the charter is the request from Sun to the
community to form up to take those actions”
[SH, cabdiscuss, 13th Dec 2005]
According to this post, we have a redefinition of the document itself, as the mediator of delegations
between Sun and the community, involving the constitutional discussions following and the goal of
the document, answer a Sun request. Confronting the number of comments on this draft with the
previous one, we notice a less debated document, with the submission of new versions after the
arriving of comments. But the process wasn't without difficulties and others redefinition of
participants and mediators, as we can see in this message from a CAB member:
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“In fact, I can say (quite pointedly) that not a single significant piece of advice given by the CAB for the
community has been followed, all of the decisions so far, including those that led to a successful initial
release, the entire opensolaris website, and the miserable lack of meaningful collaboration via a shared
version control system, have been made on private lists within Sun. A lot of those decisions have been
good, a small number of them have been bad, and a few simply unnecessary. None of them made use of
the CAB as a public body, though they sometimes involved participation by individual CAB members.
Perhaps that is the central problem with being called the “Community Advisory Board”: we aren't
actionable. It doesn't matter how we want the website to work because the website is not an open source
project. It doesn't matter that we want a versioning system that has proven itself on countless other
projects, because the versioning system for OpenSolaris has to be the same one that all of Sun uses
internally for notyetreleased code. It doesn't matter how we think collaboration should involve people
outside of Sun as peers because Sun engineering is not willing to risk giving up control to peers that
might not share its own culture. We aren't creating an open community”
[RF, cabdiscuss, 20th Dec 2005]
The RF's participation to the community didn't stop but, in this passage, connected with the discussion
of the document providing independence to the community, we can see how this independence is
connected not only to legal texts, but also to other elements, technological and social, the website, the
versioning system, the role of peers, which participate directly in the construction of the open
character of the community, in a way which is not to be takenforgranted, but it is under negotiation.
So, I described a process of construction of an artefact, a legal one, participating in the setting up of
the independence of the community from Sun, which involves different elements: economical ones,
organizational ones and technological ones. This process is also defining who the participants are,
what is the OpenSolaris community, its goals, and means. At the same time, the document mediates
between different participants, and set up other mediators involved in the fluid ongoing of the
OpenSolaris community life. Focusing on this practices, the inscription of freedom in FLOSS
artefacts, allows me to point to the ecology of actors involved, to the mediation they perform and to
the meanings of freedom they enact. How to reconnect this practices to the FLOSS social world and to
its intersection with other social worlds is what the next paragraph will do.
From community to emancipation
I've told a story of legal production, a story of interactions mediated by emails, a story of practices of
freedom. Now, I will tell a story of how these practices and stories can be connected with the
construction of a new social formation: cyberspace (Hakken, 1999). Cyberspace can be roughly
defined as a formation where the role of Automated Information Technologies is increasing and
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becoming more central, but cannot be reduced to that. Cyberspace, as the word cyborg remember
(Haraway, 1991), is a space where boundaries collapse, where humans and non humans entities are
fluidly mixed, where the technological and the biological are not really distinguishable. It is a space in
which we can consider that new relations can be established, but it hasn't grown in the vacuum, it is
growing in existing practices and relations. So, groups and controversies around cyberspace are
participating to the differentiation of it from the previous social formations. In this sense,
computerization has often been seen as potentially emancipatory (Ceruzzi, 2003), and
computerization movements stressed different emancipation potentials (Kling, Iacono, 1995). The aim
of the story in this paragraph is to tell about how a FLOSS community is taking part to this process,
how is it fixing fluid meanings and making fluids meanings which were fixed. Also in this case,
considering freedom in FLOSS is the way to recall the origins of the phenomenon as well as
envisioning its potential future.
The empirical case I showed is about constructing one legal artefact, it is about the sociotechnical
interaction network mobilized and reconstructed, with emails, texts, other legal artefacts, and
technological artefacts. It is about a practice, that of constructing legal documents, which belongs to
almost every FLOSS community, but is differently performed by each one; a practice that is
reproduced in different communities and periods; it requires a social ecology surrounding it, the
Western legal lexicon and system (in particular the U.S.A. one); it makes order in the community's
life, regulating partly the relation between Sun and the community itself. Mobilizing this network of
entities and recognizability, this practice produces norms, it is involved in a process of jurigenesis
(Coleman, 2005). Talking about jurigenesis in FLOSS communities is talking about the construction
of norms related to freedom, of users and developers. According to Coleman (2005), it is talking
about freedom of speech, which is able to be connected, in an historical perspective, to a politic of
contrast to the extension of intellectual property rights. So, this can be considered one of the ways
through which FLOSS communities underline their emancipatory potential. On the other side, I
stressed the fact that we can talk not only about freedom of speech, but also about different meanings
of freedom, involving technology, organizations and money. To better understand that kind of
elements, we have to focus on the project history, on the reasons attracting corporation toward FLOSS
development and on the consequences this have for the enactment of different meanings of freedom.
Lin (2004) underlined how the hybrid character of open source practices, with the involvement of
hackers and corporations, can be traced back to some of the practices of FLOSS development, and to
their ability to interest corporation: more effectiveness in bug reporting, the increasing of serendipity
in innovation, the possibility to build a status in the FLOSS panorama has to be considered. From this
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point of view, the entire OpenSolaris project can be understood as the enactment of FLOSS as a
business strategy, as described by Goldman and Gabriel (2005): corporation are interested in
embracing FLOSS if they want more reliable software and to open up spaces for unexpected
innovations. The analysis of Lin is confirmed by the Goldman and Gabriel view. So the Sun behaviour
can be understood better if we take the point of view of the two authors (who are Sun engineers and
whose book was shipped for free by Sun to people registering to their network). In this sense the
Charter is to be considered as one of the way through which Sun is releasing its control on the system
and embracing innovations coming from community's participants. At the same time, the practices
surrounding this step define and enlarge the meanings and practices involved in this shift of control,
giving the word independence a practisebased meaning. Not only Sun look at FLOSS as a business
strategy, but also as a societal shift, at least according to Phipps (2005), the Sun Chief Open Source
Officer: it is a shift toward the “age of access” (Rifkin, 2001). In this sense, Sun, and the OpenSolaris
community, are participating to what can be called, in agreement with David Hakken (2003),
cyberscaping, a form of landscaping: “a dialectical practice that involves envisioning a difference,
taking steps to impose it, but also accommodating to what develops” (14). So, participants to the
OpenSolaris community are participating to this kind of practice, constructing cyberspace. As we
have seen in the case of the Charter, this participation is strictly connected with the construction of
independence, assuming an emancipatory character with a shift of competences and power from a
corporation to people involved in the community. At the same time, these practices are practices of
inscription of views of the world in artefacts and technologies, practices which involve the
construction and mobilization of sociotechnical interaction networks composed by democratic
principles, people, other technologies and artefacts. The picture is complex but, as I shown, traceable
in the everyday activity of developers. Contemporary, these practices are focused in inscribing views
of the world in artefacts and technologies which will be used by the same developer. In this sense, the
description take place at the same moment the inscription is carried on, as the last message reported
before showed: the open and free meaning is put in discussion through the involvement in the
participation to the construction of the same open and free. The networks of moralities, competences
and delegations which can be traced during the description process are part of the process of
inscription: this stimulate metadiscourses on what can be considered free and open, becoming
another way for FLOSS practices to be emancipatory, because they contribute to the spreading and
mobilization of sociocultural awareness through and by participants.
Conclusions
I began this article with a double aim: investigating practices of freedom and show how this inquiry
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can help in telling something about the concepts of inscription/description. At the end of the previous
paragraph, I underlined how the double role of users and developers of the OpenSolaris Charter by the
participants to the discussions about it, stimulated metadiscourses on what has to be considered free
and open. So, this is part of the contribution the study of FLOSS can bring to STS: the blurred
boundaries between users and developers of the products of scientific and technological practices
brought to the development of metadiscourses on the politics of science and technology in an explicit
way.
As I tried to show, the practices of FLOSS development, involving the construction of technology and
legal artefacts, are interesting corporations and enrolling them in the spreading of FLOSS practices
and values. At the same time, these practices are inscribing in artefacts and enacting different kinds of
freedom, contributing to the landscaping of cyberspace. In these sense, I call this practices, practices
of freedom. At the beginning, I argue for a practisebased approach to FLOSS, a perspective which
will take as problematic the enactment of freedom, both in the Stallman view and in the Raymond
one, and connect that to the development activities. From the empirical point of view, I concentrated
on the construction of a legal artefact, the OpenSolaris Charter, and on the sociotechnical interaction
network surrounding that construction. This can be considered a practice because it is recognized as a
whole, and qualitatively different to other practices, like code writing, and so on. At the same time,
the practice of construction of a legal artefact in the OpenSolaris community is different from that
enacted in other FLOSS communities, for example because of the presence of Sun. This practice is
sustained by the legal system, and temporarily makes order in the OpenSolaris community, for
example giving guidelines for the Constitution writing. So, the writing of legal artefacts can be
considered one of the practices of freedom to be studied.
At the same time, the sociotechnical interaction network mobilized by this practice is involving
technological elements, a set of web – based instrument, social ones, democratic principles and
potential participants. But the document, as well as the discussions on that, mobilize concept of what
has to be considered open and free, and the democratic principles are connected with a sense of
independence, from the monetary, technological and organizational point of view. In this sense, the
practices of freedom can be considered emancipatory: they involve metadiscourses on freedom and
technology, they landscape artefacts and, through them, cyberspace.
In conclusion, I can affirm that a practicebased perspective on FLOSS involve reflections on which
kind of practices are pertaining to FLOSS social world, which connection these practices have with
other social worlds, historical periods and views of the world. The empirical case I described showed
how a company is interested by FLOSS practices, mainly in their capability to increase serendipity in
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innovation. At the same time, this company envisions a new world, the age of access, and the choice
of free and open source software development is a step taken to impose this view. This steps allow the
discussions described, discussions which are changing the concept of freedom, giving it different
meanings, mainly connected with the construction of independence. So, a study of freedom in FLOSS
is able to show how different actors involved are connected through practices and coparticipate to the
emancipatory character of FLOSS, in term both of independence of communities and of instantiation
of democratic and liberal principles.
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Annex
The OpenSolaris Charter5
0. Whereby Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun) has granted license to a certain subset of its Solaris Operating
System, known henceforth as OpenSolaris, to all under terms compatible with Open Source ideals, and
whereby open and constructive development and dissemination of this code base is desired by all, Sun does by
the execution of this charter all of the following: First, establish an OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) to
manage and direct an OpenSolaris community in its efforts to improve upon and advocate in favor of
OpenSolaris, so that the community may long endure. Second, grant to the OGB certain powers and rights as
are necessary to discharge its duties. Third, assign to the OGB a suitable initial membership. Last, establish a
time at which this initial OGB shall have discharged its responsibilities and ceded to its successor the powers
and rights granted herein.
1. The OGB shall be comprised of natural persons of number and nature to be defined by the Constitution, but
in no event shall they be fewer than three in number at any time. The Board shall be selected and shall conduct
its affairs in accordance with democratic principles and shall represent the interests of the OpenSolaris
community.
1.1. Should the OGB number fewer than three persons at any time, Sun shall, at its sole discretion,
appoint to the OGB additional natural persons sufficient in number to increase the OGB's membership
to three. Those appointees shall serve only until processes to elect their replacements can be carried
out.
2. The OGB shall construct and maintain a Constitution defining all of the following:
2.1. A process by which the Constitution may be amended from time to time.
2.2. Methods and processes by which the OGB's membership shall be determined. These must at all
times ensure satisfaction of the constraints imposed by this charter, including but not limited to those
described in Section 1.
2.3. The roles recognized within the community.
2.4. The rights and responsibilities associated with each role.
2.5. The intended methods of communication between the OGB and Sun.
2.6. Methods and processes by which disputes and disagreements among OpenSolaris community
members might be resolved in a fair and just manner. OpenSolaris community members are to receive
equal treatment during the resolution of a dispute or disagreement, without reference to any personal
attribute or affiliation.
5 Rights on this document belong to the OpenSolaris Community and Sun Microsystems, Inc. .
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2.7. Regulations applicable to the OpenSolaris community as it finds beneficial to its development and
growth.
2.8. The establishment and operation of, and delegation of appropriate powers and rights to, any
associate governing bodies which it shall deem appropriate to the execution of any part of the
Constitution or this Charter. In all cases, disputes not resolvable within those delegated bodies may be
appealed to the OGB.
3. The OGB shall define and implement a process for its ratification of the Constitution, in a manner
consistent with democratic principles. This process shall at a minimum involve members of the OpenSolaris
community in addition to the membership of the OGB.
4. The initial Constitution shall be operable when ratified by both the OGB and Sun.
5. The OGB shall be the supreme and final arbiter of all matters pertaining to the OpenSolaris Constitution.
6. All powers and rights are granted to the OGB which are required for the execution of this Charter or the
properly ratified Constitution and which are not inconsistent with applicable law or regulation.
However, nothing in this charter shall be construed so as to confer to the OGB: (a) any title or right under
copyright, patent, trademark, or other intellectual property law; (b) control of or interest in any asset, tangible
or intangible, of Sun Microsystems, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries; (c) control of or interest in Sun
Microsystems, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries.
7. All members of the Community Advisory Board (CAB) shall be initial members of the OGB. The initial
OGB may select additional initial members as it may require to discharge its duties.
8. No initial OGB member may retain his or her membership beyond 30 June 2006, or after such time as the
first OGB members selected in accordance with the terms of a properly ratified Constitution take office,
whichever occurs first. However, if an initial member shall be so selected, he or she may serve as he or she
otherwise would.
9. Notwithstanding any part of provisions 7 and 8, the CAB and the initial OGB shall be dissolved
on 30 June 2006.
10. If the initial OGB shall be dissolved before an initial Constitution is properly ratified, Sun shall appoint a
new set of initial OGB members in any manner it shall deem appropriate, and the terms of this Charter shall
be applied to those replacement members with the following exceptions:
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10.1. Provision 7 shall be inoperable.
10.2. Provision 8 shall be altered such that the termination date shall be extended by 6 months.
10.3. Provision 9 shall be altered such that the reference to the CAB is removed and the dissolution date
shall be extended by 6 months.
11. This Charter may be amended if both the OGB and Sun agree. If an agreement on amendment cannot be
reached, or if the OGB fails to approve an amended Charter, the previous version of the Charter remains in
force.
11.1. To request that the Charter be amended, the OGB must affirm a motion by a supermajority vote
consisting of at least twothirds of the current OGB members.
11.2. To approve an amendment to the Charter, the OGB must affirm a motion by a supermajority vote
consisting of at least twothirds of the current OGB members.
11.3. Notwithstanding any part of provisions 11, 11.1, or 11.2, the initial OGB shall have no power to
alter any provision of this Charter.
On 8 February 2006, the Community Advisory Board met to adopt the Charter.
MOTION
To adopt Charter It was moved XXX
On 10 February 2006, Sun Microsystems agreed to use the Charter as the basis for creating the OpenSolaris
Governing Board. On behalf of Sun,
XXX