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Lefis Workshop 200424th – 25th July
Queens University, BelfastOpen Source, Code and Open Source, Code and
Architecture: It’s the Memes Stupid!Architecture: It’s the Memes Stupid!
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Open Source
• Emerging Issues
• What is Open Source?
• Why is it here?
• Will it stick around? (Kimono Nikulainen)
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Open Source
• Perspectives
• Post-Capitalist Production
• A force for Good (Economist, 2004)
• Bill Gates?
• Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond
• Lawyer *
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Law as an Interpretive Constituency
• Open Source just does not fit
• Law: Rules and Norms
• Copyright and Patent
• Q: Can the Open Source Concept be Q: Can the Open Source Concept be applied to Content?applied to Content?
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Law as an Interpretive Constituency
• Copyright Model– Social Contract– Reciprocity– Incentive– Scarcity– Innovation and Creativity
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Law as an Interpretive Constituency
• Patent Model– Social Contract– Reciprocity– Incentive– Scarcity – Inventive Steps
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Beyond The Legal Paradigm
• Transforming Ideas
• Designing “Incentive Models”– A + B = C
• Copyright Narrative
- “original” + “work” = property right
• Philosophical/Economic rationale?
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BeyondBeyond The Legal Paradigm
• Conundrum: Can the Open Source Concept be applied to Content?
• What Model?
A + B = D (No Property EntitlementNo Property Entitlement as such)
• Inversion: how does knowledge seep Inversion: how does knowledge seep into organisational structures?into organisational structures?
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CodeCode: Lessig’s Insights
• What is Code really about?– Laws, Markets, Code and Norms– Technological Determinism– Model of Governance for Cyberspace
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Code: An Alternative View
• Metaphor– Ideology– Values– rules
• Technology– Network Society (M Castells)
• Evolution– Cultural Struggles
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What is Evolutionary Theory?
• “This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left either a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in certain polymorphic species, or would ultimately become fixed, owing to the nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions.”
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Evolution characteristics
• Natural Selection– Interactivity– Hereditary– Variety– Scarce Resources
• Evolution = Process (Not Deity)
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Evolutionary Theory
• Contemporary Relevance– SARS– MRSA– The Human Genome Project– Ideas? Knowledge?
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Criticism of Evolutionary Theory
• The Internet does not have sex organs (B Latour, Aramis)– Darwin’s insights does not limit the
characteristics to a biological system
• What is the relevance of ET to Open Source?
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Some Answers
• The information Society
• Cultural Evolution
• The Open Source movement is the result of – Interactivity (Internet)– Collaboration (Peer review)– Struggle (IPR and DRM – CODE)– Adaptation, replication and imitation
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Where is the Evidence?
• Emergence of Network Society (The information ecosystem)
• Cultural Networks display “traits” (see various OS licenses)
• Adaptation and propagation– Hackers, Technos, Creative Commons,
Software Commons, Scholarly Commons, Subject Commons
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Afterthought?
• Darwin does not talk about Cultures
• Solution: Use the “gene” as an analogy– What if “gene-types” exist in cultures that
that jump from brain to brain?– Richard Dawkins says we have “memes”
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What is a meme?
• ‘I think a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.’ (The Selfish Gene)
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…contd
• ‘The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme.’ (The Selfish Gene)
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…contd
• A meme is:– An idea– A tune– A way of doing things– A Skill
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Examples
• The invention of the laser
• The idea leads to a patent
• Subsequent inventions of laser-related patents.
• Uniting memes with evolution theory:– Selection, replication and directed mutation– Variation, inheritance and differential
vigour
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The Darwinian Arms Race
• 2000 – LINUX captures 27 % OS (Microsoft captures 41 %)
• GNU/Linux, Open Source and free software are going mainstream
• IBM, Borland and HP making available open source products
• IBM to invest $1bn on Linux development
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How are information flows seeking out new organisations?
• Viral licenses
• Cultural memes
• New organisations which are creating a “market” for public goods
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What does Evolutionary Theory Teach us?
• The boundary between production and consumption of ideas is maintained– “information wants to be free”
• IPRS blur the boundaries• Institutional designs evolve
– Previously market and property rights seen as cornerstone
– Open Source creates a balance in the information ecosystem (this is Lessig’s thesis in Free Culture)
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The Difficult Questions
• Is there a limit to Memes?
• What is the role of IPR? Benchmarking, standard, niche markets
• Why are we asking these questions?
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The thought process of Plants and Animals
• Eat
• Survive
• Reproduce
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The Thought Process of Man
• What’s it All About?– The struggle for cultural dominance
