Freedom Imagined: Morality and Aesthetics in Open Source Software Design

Abstract

This paper is about the interaction between the human imagination and technology among a self-described ‘community’: that of developers of Free or Open Source Software. I argue that the moral imagination observable in this phenomenon can be understood with reference to its emergence around specific methods of technical production. Principles of openness, truth, freedom and progress, which are also understood as central to the technical production of good software, are reinforced (as a ethical orientation) by their contribution to making ‘good’ software. A reciprocal dynamic ensues in which better software is seen as dependent on particular social practices and ideologies while these practices and ideologies are given salience by their success in fostering valuable production. Processes key to the generation of this social form are examined before a number of key features of the practice of programming, such as its often combative and individualistic character, and an absence of women in developer communities, are considered in the light of the analysis.

Keywords:

• Software
• ethics
• freedom
• progress
• social form

Notes

From here on, I adopt the term used by f/loss programmers themselves to describe the people involved in the production of this software: a ‘community’. I am not making a sociological claim that f/loss is a community, but making an observation that the idea that f/loss is a community is an ideological component of the social form that is f/loss. That has effects. These may indeed be the creation of an actual community, but the mechanisms of that are not my concern in this paper.

f/loss: an acronym for Free/Libre/Open Source Software, and has the advantage for an outsider of glossing over distinctions between coders and coding projects based on the community's internal, and shifting, (political) divisions. There are many published accounts of the differences between Free Software ideologies, and Open Source ideologies (e.g. DiBona et al. 1999) but these are not discussed here. Instead, I undertake an analysis of the generation of an encompassing social form; the outcome of principles and assumptions which help to form the social interactions through which f/loss software is written.

In this context, ‘hacker’ carries only the connotation of a high level of ability with writing and understanding the languages in which computer code is written, not someone with criminal intent.

Bernhard Krieger and Dawn Nafus. See www.flosspols.org.

To (consciously) highlight a term used in f/loss.

For a discussion and analysis of the use of the notion of the (Maussian) Gift among f/loss participants, and their investment in the notion of there being ‘hacker culture’ see Kelty (1999, 2004).

www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html.

www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html.

www.creativecommons.org.

http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2007/05/linus-torvalds-on-git-and-scm-html.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/07/why-congress-needs-a-version-c.html.

www.efytimes.com/efytimes/21160/news.htm.

Richard Stallman. www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html.

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/campusreps.

Having dwelt on the way discourses around these technologies draw upon ‘natural’ or ‘scientific’ theories of human action and potential in establishing their social form, I do not here consider the commonly heard recourse to theories of ‘natural’ differences between male and female brains to explain the low participation of women. Such theories (which have been present in the ethnography that I have collected) must be taken as ethnographic data rather than analytic end points.

Lin 2005 being an exception.