To Free or not To Free, That is the question.

Throughout the history of computing technology and the advent of the internet there have been many developments and contributions to digital information sharing. Previously we had discussed peer-to-peer file sharing and its impact on copyright infringement which is a relatively new phenomenon. In opposition, this idea of free data or file sharing came to mind in the early 1980’s when software programming became commoditized. Software programming until this point was primarily a free exchange market between scientific colleagues and the idea of having to pay for source codes extremely aggravated the MIT programmer Richard Stallman. Stallman, in response to this cultural shift had launched the GNU project. This project utilized the fundamentals of copyright law, but it was used in order to benefit and reduce restrictions on reuse to the public rather than confining them. Stallman developed a license on this principle using a word play on copyright and coined the term, “copyleft,” license. The, “copyleft,” license was a shear polar opposite of copyright restrictions and the term, “free software,” was initiated. This allowed users to run these forms of free or open-source software programs for any purpose with the freedoms to study and modify the programs in order, “to make improvements to the program,” according to Bruce Perens. This is significant to the public so the whole community benefits, under the strict licensing agreement that the source code must be kept open and shared in the public domain before compilation. Stallman defines free or open-source software with the following explanation: “Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ‘free’ as in ‘free speech’, not ‘free beer’”.

An example of open-source software that I am highly familiar with is the Linux Operating System. Linux, unlike most operating systems is free, and is open to the user’s modification of the source code to better suit their needs. According to lecture, “Linux became very popular within the scientific and research communities in the 1990’s.” Because UB is a research focused institution, especially within the engineering department, Linux is the primary OS (operating system) in the engineering computer labs. I am familiar with this program because I recently took an intro to java programming course in the spring referred to as CSE113.

This system is great not only because it is free, but the individual user can alter the application programs to suit their individual needs or desires. I myself never altered the applications in Linux, but through Linux I was able to write my own source code for my own applications. The code that I wrote was in the program Dr. Java, which is an open-source software program itself. The department had altered the program and created its own classes for the students to better understand and execute the code. I had actually written six programs that semester, which were also open-source software programs that anyone had the ability to access and alter even after compilation. I found it to be highly interesting that I was able to write programs that were free, that are very similar to programs that people would ordinarily pay for. For instance I wrote a program that is capable of altering an image to any extent that an image can be manipulated. The program I wrote is very similar to Photoshop, but it is easier to use, and the source code was left available to any user who wanted to add methods of manipulation to the code. Another program that I wrote is a contact phonebook that has all the capabilities of any other cellular phonebook. The irony in this is that my cell phone runs a java program for its phonebook, which was paid for by Motorola, when they could have simply taken the program I wrote for free. This would have been a form of a gift economy, only without the concept of implicit reciprocation. The gift according to Peter Kollack, “Gift exchanges should not involve explicit bargaining or demands that the gift is reciprocated, but a relationship in which there is only giving and no receiving is unlikely to last.”

I feel that open-source software is highly beneficial to the public and holds very little drawback to the profits of paid software developers. I also believe that this software such as Linux and Dr. Java reduce the amount of copyright infringement taking place. This is a great idea because it allows people with the capability and knowledge to write source codes for programs and then distribute it to whomever they feel like. This eliminates the amount of, “theft, piracy, and copyright infringement” currently taking place and is also an established middle ground between the desires of both file sharers and tangible product developers.

Lackaff, Derek. (2007). Intro to the Internet: COM125. Lecture notes.

Kollack, Peter. (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. Communities in Cyberspace.

Perens, Bruce. (1999) Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source revolution. O’Reily Online Catalog.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2007). Free Software. Wikipedia.