[ox-en] Re: Athina Karatzogianni * Confronting the difficulties of learning from the open source for contemporary social movements

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Just a thought here that might clarify this for you Stefan

Sociopolitical movements may use open source or other peer produced tools,
as and when it is agreeable to their overall
frame/strategy/identity/organizational/mobilizational structure. Peer
producing communities are another matter you are correct, and whether they
will choose to have a social-movement/ideological/political component will
depend on whether their commitment is to social change or they are just
happy to produce code and improve the technical side of things without any
of the political complications. The advantage of being apolitical, as the
Athenians used to say an 'Idiot'- meaning a private person not interested in
the commons, is that it is very inclusive to whoever wants to just write
code, or join in peer production just because the technology turns them on.
In this latter case, and I am not making any judgements here by the way,
there is no political commitment of any type, except perhaps against the
proprietary monopoly, which is still critical.

Cheers
Athina


On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Stefan Merten <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi again!
>
> Oops there was one point I forgot in my last reply.
>
> 6 days ago Stefan Merten wrote:
> > * Bruce Perens 2003 at the LinuxWorld Conference
> >
> > * 'This is a "Linux" show, focusing upon a product. But the real
> >   subject of this trade show - Free Software and open Source - is a
> >   social movement. Like other social movements, its advances its own
> >   ideas - in our case ideas about software equality, competition,
> >   copyrights and patents as property. It's extremely unusual in that
> >   few other social movements make real products.
>
> I'd put it differently. Free Software / peer production *is not* a
> social movement in the sense of the talk of Athina. In fact even Bruce
> Perens emphasizes the fact that peer production is about production.
>
> Instead I'd say peer production *creates* classical political
> movements when necessary. Bruce names a few topics for which it is
> useful for peer production to have an accompanying political movement.
>
>
>                                                Grüße
>
>                                                Stefan
>



-- 
Dr Athina Karatzogianni
Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society
The Dean's Representative (Chinese Partnerships)
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
The University of Hull
United Kingdom
HU6 7RX
T: ++44 (0) 1482 46 5790
F: ++44 (0) 1482 466107
http://www.hull.ac.uk/humanities/media_studies/staff/athina_karatzogianni/

Check out Athina's new research:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Resistance-Conflict-Contemporary-World/dp/0415452988


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