Homesteading the noosphere: The ethics of owning biological information

The idea of homesteading can be extended to the realm of biological entities, to the ownership of information wherein organisms perform artifactual functions as a result of human development. Can the information of biological entities be ethically “homesteaded”: should humans (or businesses) have ownership rights over this information from the basis of mere development and possession, as in Locke’s theory of private property? I offer three non-consequentialist arguments against such homesteading: the information makeup of biological entities is not commonly owned, and thus is not available for homesteading; the value of the individual biological entity extends to the information whereby it is constituted, and includes inalienable rights of an entity over itself and its information; and use of life as an information artifact makes an organism an unending means to an end rather than an end itself. I conclude that the information space of biological entities is not open for homesteading, not liable to private ownership, and should not be available for perpetual exploitation

Ego & eXtreme programming in the libre software context

NUL

Slashdot, open news and informated media: exploring the intersection of imagined futures and web publishing technology

"In this essay, my interest is in how imagined media futures are implicated in the work of producing novel web publishing technology. I explore the issue through an account of the emergence of Slashdot, the tech news and discussion site that by 1999 had implemented a number of recommendation features now associated with social media and web 2.0 platforms. Specifically, I aim to understand the connection between the development of Slashdot’s influential content-management system (CMS) - an elaborate publishing infrastructure called “Slash” that allowed editors to choose reader submissions for publication and automatically distributed the work of moderating the comments sections among trusted users - and two distinct visions of a web-enabled transformation of media production.

Interdisciplinary insights on Open Source

The term “open source” is widely applied to describe some software development methodologies. This paper does not provide a judgment on the open source approach, but exposes the fact that simply stating that a project is open source does not provide a precise description of the approach used to support the project. By taking a multidisciplinary point of view, we propose a collection of characteristics that are common, as well as some that vary among open source projects. The set of open source characteristics we found can be used as a tick-list both for analysing and for setting up open source projects. Our tick-list also provides a starting point for understanding the many meanings of the term open source

The Allocation of Software Development Resources In ‘Open Source’ Production Mode

This paper aims to develop a stochastic simulation structure capable of describing the decentralized, micro-level decisions that allocate programming resources both within and among open source/free software (OS/FS) projects, and that thereby generate an array of OS/FS system products each of which possesses particular qualitative attributes. The core or behavioral kernel of simulation tool presented here represents the effects of the reputational reward structure of OS/FS communities (as characterized by Raymond 1998) to be the key mechanism governing the probabilistic allocation of agents’ individual contributions among the constituent components of an evolving software system. In this regard, our approach follows the institutional analysis approach associated with studies of academic researchers in “open science” communities. For the purposes of this first step, the focus of the analysis is confined to showing the ways in which the specific norms of the reward system and organizational rules can shape emergent properties of successive releases of code for a given project, such as its range of functions and reliability. The global performance of the OS/FS mode, in matching the functional and other characteristics of the variety of software systems that are produced with the needs of users in various sectors of the economy and polity, obviously, is a matter of considerable importance that will bear upon the long-term viability and growth of this mode of organizing production and distribution. Our larger objective, therefore, is to arrive at a parsimonious characterization of the workings of OS/FS communities engaged across a number of projects, and their collective productive performance in dimensions that are amenable to “social welfare” evaluation. Seeking that goal will pose further new and interesting problems for study, a number of which are identified in the essay’s conclusion. Yet, it is argued that that these too will be found to be tractable within the framework provided by refining and elaborating on the core (“proof of concept”) model that is presented in this paper.

A aplicação do crowdsourcing e o modelo de Bazaar no desenvolvimento de classificações de bibliotecas: uma avaliação da Classificação Open Shelves

This paper presents a discussion of crowdsourcing approaches to knowledge organization and more specifically to the development of classification schemes. It analyzes the case of Open Shelves Classification, a terminated project that was developed by the LibraryThing community following the "open source model", and assesses its outcomes from methodological and sociological points of view. Working with all the documentation of the project that is freely available, the text conducts an analysis of the project following the structure of the methodological lessons for open source (Bazaar model) presented by Eric Raymond in his seminal work "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and complementing it with the discussion of the sociological aspects presented in "Homesteading the Noosphere" and other writings. The paper concludes with some recommendations for the success of open source projects and some possibilities of research for crowdsourcing projects and social epistemology.O trabalho apresenta uma discussão sobre as abordagens de crowdsourcing para organização do conhecimento e, mais especificamente, para o desenvolvimento de sistemas de classificação. Além de analisar o caso da Open Shelves Classification, um projeto finalizado e desenvolvido pela comunidade LibraryThing seguindo o "modelo de código aberto", e avaliar o resultado de pontos de vista metodológicos e sociológicos, o artigo trabalha com a documentação do projeto disponível, realiza uma análise do projeto seguindo a estrutura dos pontos metodológicos para projetos de código aberto (modelo Bazar) apresentados por Eric Raymond em seu trabalho seminal "A Catedral e o Bazaar" e complementa com a discussão dos aspectos sociológicos apresentados em "Homesteading the Noosphere" e outras literaturas. A conclusão deste trabalho inclui recomendações para o sucesso de projetos de código aberto e algumas possibilidades de pesquisa para projetos de crowdsourcing e epistemologia social

Getting maximum benefit from the DSpace project

DSpace software is published under an Open Source (OS) license. The direct consequence of this is that the source code is made available for anyone to download, use, modify and distribute. The ramifications of DSpace’s license reach into every interraction with DSpace, from evaluating and installing the software, obtaining technical and user help, to modifying and extending the code. This article aims to convey how one might start to investigate and install the DSpace software, how involvement with the software might develop, and how best to work with the community of DSpace developers and users at each step of the way

Interdisciplinary Insights on Open Source

The term “open source” is widely applied to describe some software development methodologies. This paper does not provide a judgment on the open source approach, but exposes the fact that simply stating that a project is open source does not provide a precise description of the approach used to support the project. By taking a multi- disciplinary point of view, we propose a collection of characteristics that are common, as well as some that vary among open source projects. The set of open source characteristics we found can be used as a tick-list both for analysing and for setting up open source projects. Our tick-list also provides a starting point for understanding the many meanings of the term open source

Open Source Paradigm: A Synopsis of The Cathedral and the Bazaar for Health and Social Care

Background: Open source software (OSS) is becoming more fashionable in health and social care, although the ideas are not new. However progress has been slower than many had expected.Objective: The purpose is to summarise the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) paradigm in terms of what it is, how it impacts users and software engineers and how it can work as a business model in health and social care sectors.Method: Much of this paper is a synopsis of Eric Raymond’s seminal book The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which was the first comprehensive description of the open source ecosystem, set out in three long essays. Direct quotes from the book are used liberally, without reference to specific passages. The first part contrasts open and closed source approaches to software development and support. The second part describes the culture and practices of the open source movement. The third part considers business models.Conclusion: A key benefit of open source is that users can access and collaborate on improving the software if they wish. Closed source code may be regarded as a strategic business risk that that may be unacceptable if there is an open source alternative. The sharing culture of the open source movement fits well with that of health and social care