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...
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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:
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.
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.
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I tried responding a couple days ago and failed miserably trying to use my "wordpress" account to login. I'll figure it out eventually.
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge fan of open source software, and have tried to use it as much as possible. I've run Openoffice for years now, and Gentoo is my OS of choice (at least on my home machine... for my notebook I'm still using XP). In fact, my love of open source fed into my research into open access publishing.
I'm looking forward to seeing which anthro readings you find useful for studying the Ubuntu community, and what parallels your findings will have with mine on the open access publishing side.
As a Gentoo user, it's also interesting to see the big differences between F/OSS projects. (gentoo in the past made little attempt to attract windows users, etc..).
Not sure if you've found them yet, but heres some immediate links:
Dr. John Postill's blog post covering an Ethnographic study of Ubuntu. Dr. Postill is very active in the anthro blogsphere and has helped me out a number of times with great feedback.
http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/anthropological-study-of-the-ubuntu-linux-community-of-practice/
It's always fun to quote some ESR too - especially when he goes off on how great it is to own guns... (kidding).
http://www.catb.org/~esr/
How will you participate in the community? As a user, or perhaps involve yourself in bug fixes? (ie: correcting bad documentation, testing bugs, testing bug fixes, etc?).
Looking forward to hearing more!
Owen.
Wow, the Thesis that Dr. John Postill link to is a wonderful source of information. I’d say that it is even « too » close to what I intended to do. Thank you a lot for the link. As for Eric Raymond, I already intend to get a hand on his book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar."
ReplyDeleteFor more serious reading, I’ve already come across a few books on open source like “The success of open source” by Steven Weber (2004) and “Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software”, edited by Feller et al. (2005). There are a few others, but I don’t want someone to grab them at the library before I do, so I’ll keep this quiet for now.
For the participation, I'll try to contact the LoCo and see if there's anything to be done with the documentation. There's also this "Global Bug Jam" event this Febuary, I'll see how I can participate.
Hey no such thing as "too close", I'm sure there are questions to be built on, reworked, reinterpreted. I think we should work on the exact same research questions more often!
ReplyDelete