Community-Based Production of Open Source Software: What Do We Know About the Developers Who Participate?

This paper seeks to close an empirical gap regarding the motivations, personal attributes and behavioral patterns among free/libre and open source (FLOSS) developers, especially those involved in community-based production, and its findings on the existing literature and the future directions for research. Respondents to an extensive web-survey’s (FLOSS-US 2003) questions about their reasons for work on FLOSS are classified according to their distinct “motivational profiles” by hierarchical cluster analysis. Over half of them also are matched to projects of known membership sizes, revealing that although some members from each of the clusters are present in the small, medium and large ranges of the distribution of project sizes, the mixing fractions for the large and the very small project ranges are statistically different. Among developers who changed projects, there is a discernable flow from the bottom toward the very small towards to large projects, some of which is motivated by individuals seeking to improve their programming skills. It is found that the profile of early motivation, along with other individual attributes, significantly affects individual developers’ selections of projects from different regions of the size range.Open source software, FLOSS project, community-based peer production, population heterogeneity, micro-motives, motivational profiles, web-cast surveys, hierarchical cluster analysis

A Comprehensive Review and Synthesis of Open Source Research

The open source movement has grown steadily and matured in recent years, and this growth has been mirrored by a rise in open source related research. The objective of this paper is to pause and reflect on the state of the field. We start by conducting a comprehensive literature review of open source research, and organize the resulting 618 peer-reviewed articles into a taxonomy. Elements of this taxonomy are defined and described. We then draw on a number of existing categorization schemes to develop a framework to situate open source research within a wider nomological network. Building on concepts from systems theory, we propose a holistic framework of open source research. This framework incorporates current research, as represented by the taxonomy, identifies gaps and areas of overlap, and charts a path for future work

From the cinema screen to the smartphone: A study of the impact of media convergence on the distribution sector of American independent cinema 2006 – 2010

Film distribution has undoubtedly changed during this contemporary era of media convergence, with a range of innovative practices and methods being adopted across US film and the arrival of new organisations to the industry and distribution sector. This should not suggest that conventional distribution and marketing methods are extinct, or that the traditional gatekeepers of these fields are obsolete. Rather it should indicate a merging of old and new strategies, practices, methods, and organisations, and it is through this fusion of tradition and novelty that today’s complex distribution landscape has emerged. At the forefront of many of these changes has been American independent cinema and as such, the central question posed by this thesis is: how has media convergence impacted on the distribution and marketing of American independent cinema, and how can this impact be understood in terms of wider technological, industrial and sociocultural contexts relevant to the current media landscape? In answering this, this thesis provides a comprehensive re-mapping of the distribution sector of American independent cinema, in terms of the distributors involved and methods and strategies through which films are being released, within this contemporary era of media convergence. This thesis uses the concept of media convergence as a complex and multifaceted lens that has dimensions in the technological, industrial and sociocultural realms, through which recent innovations in film distribution and marketing can be examined. Underpinning this framework is the adoption of an approach informed by the emergent media industry studies agenda (Holt and Perren, 2009; Hilmes, 2013; and McDonald, 2013). The implementation of this converged method to understanding media industries has allowed for a fluid, diverse and multi-layered assessment of the area under examination. Specifically, the thesis uses Thomas Schatz’s (2009) macro and micro level framework to examining film industries in order to identify key trends and industrial practices within American independent cinema (and, to a degree, US film at large), exploring how they relate to specific films, filmmakers and companies, within a distribution context. From this a number of key findings have emerged, including: • The identification of a new industrial structure that has facilitated a form of re-conglomeration of parts of the American independent cinema that is similar to the co-option of American independent cinema in the late 1980s and early 1990s. • The identification of new, collaborative distribution and marketing strategies being used within American independent cinema that not only seek to connect films with consumers, but also involve them, to varying degrees, in related processes. • An outline and discussion on how changes within the distribution sector have impacted on film form and consumption practices evident in this era of convergence. The thesis provides original contributions to knowledge in the fields of American independent cinema and distribution studies at large by: reconceptualising what independent film is within this contemporary period of media convergence; reframing discussions on film distribution to be more inclusive and less elitist in their scope; providing new methodological approaches to understanding the wider workings of film distribution and marketing; and demonstrating how distribution studies can be utilised to understand innovations within the fields of film production and exhibition

Slavery and Bondage in Asia, 1550–1850

This book offers an Asia-centred story of bondage and coerced labour. Spanning the western Indian Ocean to Japan, and the 16th to the 19th century, it follows coercion from the regulation of sales to post-abolition labour contracts. In doing so, it highlights long lines, similarities, contrasts and interregional contacts of this history, and places Asia firmly within the discussion of slavery and coercion on a global scale

The Church of Antioch and the Eucharistic traditions (ca. 35–130 CE)

It is a widespread view in modern scholarship that, in the earliest church of Syrian Antioch (ca. 35–130 CE), there came together ‘divergent theological traditions’. Yet here these traditions were ‘balanced’ and ‘synthesized’. So, from Antioch, there emerged a ‘middle [traditional or theological] position’, the via media that facilitated the ‘Christian unity’ of the ‘universal church’. This via media theologica offered a way of keeping together the divergent Jewish and Hellenistic groups of Antioch. This study challenges this view and proposes a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of the theological traditions in the earliest church of Antioch. It is beyond reasonable dispute that ‘divergent traditions’ did emerge at Antioch. However, the case for the formulation of a ‘synthesized… middle position’ needs to be re-examined. To this end, the present study 1) analyses the eucharistic traditions of earliest Christianity, focusing on the following key texts: 1 Cor. 11.23–25 (Lk. 22.17–20), Matt. 26.26–29, Did. 9.1–10.6, and Ignatius, Phld. 4.1; and 2) traces their use within the earliest church of Antioch, arguing that all these traditions were composed (or adapted) and used here, between ca. 35–70 CE. Having located the eucharistic traditions in the church of Antioch, their internal dynamics are subsequently investigated. While these internal dynamics cannot be conclusively unravelled, due to the lack of adequate data, it is highly improbable that, in Antioch, the eucharistic traditions were ‘balanced’ or ‘synthesized’. Rather, there seems to be a pattern of recurrent additions: a recent tradition was added to those already existing, while the older traditions were also kept and revalued. It is by this pattern of the ‘addition’ of new traditions and ‘revaluation’ of older traditions that the church of Antioch sought to keep and consolidate the unity of its factions. Finally, since existing scholarship concerns both 1) ‘the divergent groups/traditions’ and 2) ‘the Christian unity… of the universal church’, this study seeks to find an appropriate model of ‘unity and diversity’ in Antioch, by locating the internal dynamics of the Antiochene eucharistic traditions into the larger context of the ‘unity and diversity in earliest Christianity’. The patterns and dynamics uncovered in this study appear to corroborate Hurtado’s more recent ‘interactive diversity model’

Towards a Broader View of Hunter-Gatherer Sharing

This book was funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme (7FP), TropicMicroArch 623293 Project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/187754_en.html). The book will be Open Access, thanks to FP7 post-grant Open Access (https://www.openaire.eu/postgrantoapilot)

Writing, Medium, Machine: Modern Technographies

Writing, Medium, Machine: Modern Technographies is a collection of thirteen essays by leading scholars which explores the mutual determination of forms of writing and forms of technology in modern literature. The essays unfold from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives the proposition that literature is not less but more mechanical than other forms of writing: a transfigurative ideal machine. The collection breaks new ground archaeologically, unearthing representations in literature and film of a whole range of decisive technologies from the stereopticon through census-and slot-machines to the stock ticker, and from the Telex to the manipulation of genetic code and the screens which increasingly mediate our access to the world and to each other. It also contributes significantly to critical and cultural theory by investigating key concepts which articulate the relation between writing and technology: number, measure, encoding, encryption, the archive, the interface. Technography is not just a modern matter, a feature of texts that happen to arise in a world full of machinery and pay attention to that machinery in various ways. But the mediation of other machines has beyond doubt assisted literature to imagine and start to become the ideal machine it is always aspiring to be. Contributors: Ruth Abbott, John Attridge, Kasia Boddy, Mark Byron, Beci Carver, Steven Connor, Esther Leslie, Robbie Moore, Julian Murphet, James Purdon, Sean Pryor, Paul Sheehan, Kristen Treen

The elephant and the blind men - Deciphering the Free/Libre/Open Source puzzle

The following commentary is part of First Monday's Special Issue #2: Open Source

SPECTERS OF THE UNSPEAKABLE: THE RHETORIC OF TORTURE IN GUATEMALAN LITERATURE, 1975-1985

This dissertation examines the ways in which torture was imagined and narrated in Guatemalan literature during the Internal Armed Conflict. For nearly four decades, Guatemala suffered one of the longest and most violent wars in Latin America. During that time, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people were tortured at the hands of the Guatemalan military. Torture, as suggested by Ariel Dorman, is most fundamentally “a crime committed against the imagination” (8), disrupting and often dissolving the boundaries between fact and fiction, the real and the unreal. The Introduction and Chapter One of this study explore the destabilization of this boundary by examining the historical and theoretical context for torture in Guatemala. The ubiquity and normality of torture was so terrible that, for many, it became “unspeakable”—an atrocity that defied language. Chapters Two through Four study three different literary modes of countering the state’s rhetoric of torture, probing the possibility of narrating torture despite its seemingly unsayable nature. Examining works by Rigoberta Menchú (chapter two), Marco Antonio Flores and Arturo Arias (chapter three), and Rodrigo Rey Rosa (chapter four), and aided by current theories and studies of torture, this dissertation investigates the ways in which these Guatemalan authors have sought not only to re-present torture, but also to explore and sometimes question the possibility of bearing witness to that torture in literature