Simon Yuill (GB) "forking Free Software"
As the impact of FLOSS has spread into the cultural and creative sectors the original claims for 'freedoms of production' put forward in the GNU Manifesto have been increasingly replaced by neo-liberal formulations of 'mass participation'. This has largely been based around various forkings and revisionist refactorings of the GNU GPL concept, and an over-emphasis upon licensing schemes as a vehicle for liberalised commodification within digital media. As Stallman himself recognised, the freedoms upon which Free Software is based require more than the GPL in order to be realised, yet it is debatable whether any substantial progress has been made in realising the other necessary components of a genuinely emancipative mode of production under FLOSS. Building upon the critique of 'acquisitive collaboration' outlined in my 'All Problems of Notation ... ' essay, this talk will present a critical analysis of the 'mass participation' fork as it is currently being defined by figures such as Charles Leadbeater. It will then go on to address how a different kind of forking of Free Software could be more consciously developed, one which draws concretely upon the history of movements for 'freedoms of production' such as workers cooperatives, artists collectives, unions, the feminist movement, and distributive economic models and questions to what extent FLOSS compares to these.
Simon Yuill is an artist and programmer based in Glasgow, Scotland. He is a developer in the spring_alpha and Social Versioning System (SVS) projects. He has helped setup and run a number of hacklab and free media labs in Scotland including the Chateau Institute of Technology (ChIT) and Electron Club. He has written on aspects of Free Software and cultural praxis and has contributed to publications such as Software Studies (MIT Press, 2008), the FLOSS Manuals and Digital Artists Handbook project (GOTO10 and Folly).
more from Simon : http://www.metamute.org/en/All-Problems-of-Notation-Will-be-Solved-by-the-Masses
