Internet Studies in Europe

Internet studies have historically developed in the United States. The Oxford Internet Institute (OII), launched in 2001, was the first European Internet research department - rather than a research centre or programme in a disciplinary department, the OII was able to offer degrees. To some extent, OII has managed to create an analytical perspective distinct from the cyber-law focus of major US research centres such as Harvard's Berkman Centre for Internet and Society and the Annenberg School..

Internet Studies in Europe

Internet studies have historically developed in the United States. The Oxford Internet Institute (OII), launched in 2001, was the first European Internet research department - rather than a research centre or programme in a disciplinary department, the OII was able to offer degrees. To some extent, OII has managed to create an analytical perspective distinct from the cyber-law focus of major US research centres such as Harvard's Berkman Centre for Internet and Society and the Annenberg School..

‘Open source has won and lost the war’: Legitimising commercial–communal hybridisation in a FOSS project

International audienceInformation technology (IT) firms are paying developers in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects, leading to the emergence of hybrid forms of work. In order to understand how the firm–project hybridisation process occurs, we present the results of an online survey of participants in the Debian project, as well as interviews with Debian Developers. We find that the intermingling of the commercial logic of the firm and the communal logic of the project requires rhetorical legitimation. We analyse the discourses used to legitimise firm–project cooperation as well as the organisational mechanisms which facilitate this cooperation. A first phase of legitimation, based on firm adoption of open licenses and developer self-fulfilment, aims to erase the commercial/communal divide. A second more recent phase seeks to professionalise work relations inside the project and, in doing so, challenges the social order which restricts participation in FOSS. Ultimately, hybridisation raises the question of the fair distribution of the profits firms derive from FOSS

Subverting or preserving the institution: Competing IT firm and foundation discourses about open source

The data economy depends on digital infrastructure produced in self-managed projects and communities. To understand how information technology (IT) firms communicate to a volunteer workforce, we examine IT firm and foundation employee discourses about open source. We posit that organizations employ rhetorical strategies to advocate for or resist changing the meaning of this institution. Our analysis of discourses collected at three open source professional conferences in 2019 is complemented by computational methods, which generate semantic clusters from presentation summaries. In terms of defining digital infrastructure, business models, and the firm-community relationship, we find a clear division between the discourses of large firm and consortia foundation employees, on one hand, and small firm and non-profit foundation employees, on the other. These divisions reflect these entities’ roles in the data economy and levels of concern about predatory “Big Tech” practices, which transform common goods to be shared into proprietary assets to be sold