List of questions

Back to the main purpose of this blog, I’ll list here the key questions and the focus I want to give to this project. Don’t expect those questions to be static and decisive. For now, they are simple milestone to guide this investigation.

The main objective of this research consists of understanding the free / open source community’s perception and use of software as a contestation tools against copyright, authorship and intellectual property. This question contain multiple parts:

1- Do the community perceives the F/OSS as contestation tools? By contestation tools, I mean a way to criticize and to pressurize the traditional software corporation and their ideology.

1.1- To achieve this task, I’ll need to understand and summarize what is the ideology behind proprietary software, and what about it pose problem to the F/OSS community.

2- If they do perceive the F/OSS as a contestation tools, how can they act accordingly? What action can they make to challenge the ideology that they stand up against? How do they use those tools?

2.1- What is the place of software as a mean of contestation?

2.2- What is the role of the community versus of the role of individual in this contestation?

This small collection of questions will guide my first step in the community. New questions may arise as I progress, while other may be left out. Nonetheless, it feel like a good base to start on.

About Apple's DRM

I stumble upon this, which might clarified the question raised yesterday on the new DRM-free itune's song:

Does the lack of DRM mean that it’s okay to give copies of the songs I buy to my friends?

No, copyright law is still in effect—passing songs around is music piracy. However, the lack of DRM allows you as the consumer to be the judge of what’s right and what’s wrong, giving you a flexibility that DRM couldn’t. For example, imagine parents and kids co-mingling their music libraries. That seems absolutely fair to us, although in many cases quite unlikely. And if you opt to share your iTunes library on your local network, others can stream the songs you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store (currently people can see them, but if they double-click on a song to play it, they’re prompted to authorize their computers to be able to listen). But putting a song up on a file-sharing service and letting 20 of your friends download it? That’s now possible, but not exactly ethical. (And it’s fair to note that iTunes does embed your iTunes ID in every iTunes plus file you download, so it’s easy to see who bought the file originally.)

It is effectively easier to share song, but your name is tagged to the file so you cannot upload the song with impunity. You can check out the whole FAQ on 

http://www.macworld.com/article/138000/drm_faq.html

On another note, I guess Apple remove the DRM because it was hard/impossible for legitimates customers to use their file the way they want while users of pirated version could use their material without restriction. In my opinion, DRM was encouraging piracy rather than hinder it. Buying music felt like a real rip off (it may still does though...)

The Anthropologist in mined fields

I think this is the "Table Ronde" Max Forte spoke of during last class. I just received the invitation, here it is for those interesed by the subject:

Altérités presents

ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN MINED FIELDS

Roundtable organized by Yara El-Ghadban and Kiven Strohm

Friday February 6, 2009 from 12h30 to 3h30 pm

Salle Marius Barbeau (C-3061), Département d’Anthropologie,

Université de Montréal

Moderator: Yara El-Ghadban, doctorante en anthropologie, Université de Montréal

INVITED SPEAKERS

Marie-Joëlle Zahar

Professeure agrégée, Science politique, Université de Montréal

Omar Dewachi

Post-doctorant en anthropologie, Université de Montréal

Abdel-Hamid Afana

President of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT)

Research Associate, Trauma and Global Health Program, Douglas Hospital Research Institute, McGill University

Kiven Strohm, doctorant en anthropologie, Université de Montréal

Maximilian Forte

Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University

DISCUSSANTS

Mariella Pandolfi

Professeure titulaire, Anthropologie, Université de Montréal

Nadia Proulx

Doctorante en anthropologie, Université de Montréal

A buffet will be offered during the event

FREE ENTRY

(please see poster below)

SUMMARY

L’intellectuel est peut-être une sorte de contre-mémoire possédant son propre contre-discours qui défend à la conscience de porter son regard ailleurs ou de s’endormir

– Edward Said 2005

Qu’est-ce que l’intellectuel, sinon celui qui travaille à ce que les autres n’aient pas tellement bonne conscience?

– Michel Foucault 1976

In many of Saïd and Foucault’s writings, the intellectual is called upon to keep a critical perspective by staying deliberately out-of-step with current events, in essence by offering a constant counterpoint to the immediacy of the present and its short-sightedness in order to think beyond the surface of things. However, those who undertake research in areas of conflict are often confronted with situations that expose the limits of such a position. In the middle of a conflict zone, the ethnographic text and critical reflection come face to face with the dictatorship of the present, the brutality of finitude, the fragility of human life and the imperative to respond to what seems inhumane, if only to survive.

In such a context, is critical thinking even possible? Being a form of sustained but non-reactive engagement that often occurs at a distance in time and space from the conflict zone, is critical thinking compatible with the acts of engagement that take place in areas of conflict? These are but some of the questions that we wish to discuss in the context of this roundtable, which brings together a range of researchers working in areas of conflict. The discussion will focus on the role of intellectuals in conflict zones with speakers invited to talk about their experiences and their reflections on the risks, challenges and different forms of commitment that working in such conditions inevitably implies. Finally, they are invited to share with the audience the dilemmas and second-thoughts (if there are any) that have shaped their experiences.

Issues covered in this event include :

- How is academic research practiced in areas of conflict?

- What are the risks and challenges of such a practice?

- What to do, as researchers, in the face of experiences that are unspeakable?

- Where do critical thinking and acts of engagement meet and at what point do they come apart?

- What are the traces left by the researchers when they leave these places?

Choice - F/OSS Community

Finally, I am fixed on one subject. Sadly, to choose one, is to let go many others. I guess I can't help it. If anyone of you is desperate to find an idea, I could provide a few ones. Maybe a dozen...

* * *

I will focus my ethnography on the free/open source community. Briefly stated, free/open source community is a grouping of developers and users of free/open source software (F/OSS). The particularity of such software is that they are distributed under terms that allow a user to use freely (as in free speech) his software.

The concept of freedom with computer software can be hard to grasp at first. To illustrate it, here's what I can read at the back of my Ubuntu CD, an open source operating system based on Linux:

"You are encouraged and legally entitled to copy, reinstall, modify, and redistribute this CD for yourself and your friends."

The focus point here is the community behind those software. These people, situated everywhere in the "meat world" regroup themselves on internet to work over project that they share with the rest of the world. This ideology contrasted with the mainstream business model of large software corporation such as Microsoft. Moreover, many members of this community see more in this movement than software development. Many see a way of life, a fight against propriety software, copyright holder and such. I want those members of the open source community to be at the center of my ethnographic project.

Open Source Ad on Youtube

The F/OSS community may be reach in a vast array of locations. For the purpose of this ethnography, I will start with the community section of the Ubuntu forums. Those forums were set up by community members that wanted to support fellow ubuntu users, and help each other improving their ubuntu experience. I chose this forum in particular for three reasons. I will then extend the research to the IRC chat room associate with this part of the forum.

1- As an ubuntu user, I am already familiar with other part of the forum (mainly the support part) where I asked for help and shared my little knowledge on the matter. I can't say that I am a very active member, I made a little over 100 posts over the past 3 years and my friend list is still empty.

2- The ubuntu forums in general are well regarded in the open source community. The members take pride in their openness and are really helpful. Harsh response to question such as "RTFM" (Read the Fucking Manuel) or "Google it" are frown upon, and most of the time, author of such comment get moderated.

3- I am not a programmer, nor a developer, let alone a hacker. I have absolutely no knowledge in the matter. On the other hand, I know that I will still have a place to participate in this community because of their respect for others and for their openness.

FIRST!

I found this video lately. I think it is relevant to what we talked about in class yesterday. That's all for my first post.