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Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge). The rise of the internet, popularized the term but also provided access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. “The open source model of operation and decision making allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, and differs from the more closed, centralized models of development.” (Raymond)
Open-source concepts have a set a criteria that dictate the ability to be considered as open-source. A set of rules and ideas that are comparable to a political ideology. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: 1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
7. Distribution of License The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. 10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface. –
Open Source Initiative, http://opensource.org/docs/osd
The rules of open-source are clear and precise. Open-source ideas are strongly pragmatic. Pragmatism is a philosophy that considers practical consequences or real effects to be vital components of meaning and truth. The pragmatic approach of open source ideas and the difference in its ethical approach has stabilized and given weight to its methodologies against other ideologies.
Open-source ideas are explored and tested in all aspects of society and commerce. Open-source methodologies of the internet and software production subvert the control of fascist ideology through choice. The open-source ideas of choice as a counter to fascism will be discussed through Choose your own Adventure Books, Freely distributed music and music videos of the band Radiohead, and systems of open software development especially the internet browser Firefox by mozilla.
Open Source when you boil it down is about choice. When something is free it is a very easy thing to choose. When monetary value is eliminated then true value is placed upon the item for its usefulness to the user. Open Source methodologies stem from a understanding of programming and code. Code has a particular syntax and this syntax has enabled some companies to hold the power over that syntax ie Microsoft. The control of Microsoft’s syntax exists with in the economic model that has made their company successful: make the computers operate for your user for a set price. Open-source subverts the ideas of control over the syntax and offers up a notion that when you allow users to choose their own way to run their computers or even do it themselves, control of the product is shared. The Microsoft proprietary software business model is equivalent to a standard narrative story with a beginning a middle and an end. You pay for the story that you as a user have no control over its narrative. With in literature, initial ideas of giving the users choice is the wildly popular Choose Your Own Adventure Books. Choose Your Own Adventure was one of the most popular children's series during the 1980s and 1990s, selling over 250 million copies between 1979-1998 and has been translated into at least 38 languages. ( Lodge, 2007 http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6408126.html.) These simple books with a variety in their story lines allowed options in the narrative that attempted to fit the user. The Choose Your Own Adventure books are in their content attempting to be open-source.
On the other hand, the production and economic model that produced these books is the opposite. The books were produced and sold for money in a system of control similar to a Panopticon (The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience.") The Panoptic power system exists in the economic production of the Choose Your Own Adventure book only when the user chooses not to share with other users who have other books. The producer owns the power because they produce the content for a charge. Open-source can be compared to lending the books you paid for to you best friend or neighbor. The knowledge and information is then transfered for free and the user has the options of accepting or denying the content. The sharing of the books destroys the power held by the producer of the Choose Your Own Adventure with in production.
The ideas of sharing are the foundation for the explosion of the internet. The open-source Philosophy states that access to the source code makes software easy to configure to specific user needs. Because open-source is freely distributed, it can greatly reduce the user's total cost of computing. Open-source software is reliable, stable, scalable, secure and extremely cost-effective. ( Open Source Software Institute.org ) The internet allowed different levels of sharing that previously were controllable through distribution and production. The music industry for example, in the past, maintained a control over the distribution and production of music. Artists would attach their music to a record label who would front the money to produce, advertise, and distribute that artist’s music for a fee. Artist would sign contracts based on complicated economic figures and essentially relinquishing some control over where, when, and who will have access to their particular music. The economic power existed in the hands of the producers and distributers of the music. The music industry, take EMI for instance, maintained large amounts of capital which could then attract big time artists such as The Rolling Stones, and Radiohead.
