• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

Anyone else see any humor in my having an obnoxiously long title for this post?

Personal computers only were really invented in 1976 with the release of the Apple I (and it was the Apple II that really made the market take off starting in 1977). The organization that incited this was the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of hobbyists in Silicon Valley in the mid-’70s who can be called responsible for bringing computing to the masses. Before this, computers were huge machines reserved for businesses or universities, and not devices that just anyone might have in the home. This group was all about sharing their designs and ideas. Even before them, the culture existed. I cannot give salient examples, but the open culture has always existed in parts of the tech world.

Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project (which led to the creation of GNU/Linux) in 1983, 2 years before Windows was first released (but after MS-DOS was around). Unix has been open-source since its creation. Linux has technically been around since 1991 when Linus Torvalds released the kernel), but Unix (specifically BSD Unix, the “free,” non-AT&T version) has been around since 1977. Unix was one of the, if not the, first powerful, free, complete operating/time-sharing system, and Linux was intended to be (and is) a compatible replacement for it, and is now even better and more capable for use by individuals for day-to-day computing.

The original code in Windows that handled the networking was taken right out of Unix. And, the modern (post-2000) Mac operating system is based upon Unix and mostly compatible with Unix and Linux software programs! Both software companies have benefitted from free operating systems in huge ways.

• See this previous post for examples of major open-source projects today.
• See the first paragraph of this previous post for more on the open-source movement.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

The Philosophy

Something I think is a really cool offshoot of the kind of thinking that characterized the free speech movement of the ‘60s is the Free culture movement, which supports the “permission culture.” From Wikipedia: “The movement objects to overly restrictive copyright laws, or completely rejects the concepts of copyright and intellectual property, which many members of the movement also argue hinder creativity.” From these ideas came the Copyleft movement, which supports licenses that use copyright law itself to “remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions” (Wikipedia). It advocates for licenses such as the GNU GPL and Creative Commons licenses that include the Share-alike clause

Arduino

From the free software and permission culture came the open hardware movement as well, exemplified in the Arduino microcontroller platform. What makes the Arduino project unique is that its plans are licensed under a Creative Commons license, so anyone can take the design and improve upon it. Technically, the microcontroller is useful in a wide range of applications because of its inexpensive cost ($50 to buy, less to build yourself), extensibility, and support for standard open-source programming tools. It is useful for people from artists making interactive projects to teachers teaching electronics.

The potential for open hardware projects like this are awesome, and the business models that could be built around them are very compelling even though the designs are free. As this article from Wired discusses, the business model revolves around producing quality versions of the hardware while using the power of the community to improve the product, like any commercial open-source company does. Hardware projects with similar licenses to Arduino include the open-source car and to some degree, the telephony solution Asterisk and the self-replicating protyping machine the RepRap.

Who cares?

The permission culture has shown it is ready for prime time. Openness is here to stay, and technophiles have embraced it. Why don’t you?

See also:

• Arduino’s CC license
• Open-source Philosophy
• General info on open knowledge
• Can’t forget Linux – your friendly neighborhood open-source operating system!
• Google search for “open source hardware”

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

Edit: Aaron and I are having a very nice conversation in the comments on the post. Check it out! I love it when conversations are actually possible without breaking down into personal attacks!

No, FOSS software is not related to piracy:

http://ewsnewmedia.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/harmful-programs/

My response is below the article. I apologize in advance for its rambling and somewhat incoherent qualities. I just had to interupt college apps to respond. One of my next long posts will be that, but in full form with lots of wonderful Wikipedia links like usual.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

No person can harbor any doubt that piracy is rampant on the Internet. Powerful tools such as BitTorrent allow the rapid sharing of files with ease. Sites such as the Pirate Bay allow BitTorrent users to find the files they seek. Limewire is still in widespread use. Media organizations looking to protect their rights are working as hard as ever. Ars technica, a technology news website, has an excellent article on the statistics provided by organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA on piracy. The article takes an in-depth look at the reported losses due to piracy and finds that the numbers are grossly inflated.

In my opinion, the media industry is being absolutely ridiculous in its attacks on piracy. While I agree that copyright holders have some right to enforce their ownership of works, the industry needs to embrace the Internet. The history of media has shown that while new mediums can have adverse affects on the incumbent media, like that of television on radio, the incumbent media can easily adjust their business models in response and then profit further, like radio’s embrace of the music industry after TV became the dominant entertainment medium. Media consumers are the media companies’ customers. Attacking these customers with accusations only further alienates them, no matter how true these accusations are. A better tactic would be to invest the necessary capital to move the anachronistic music industry into the age of YouTube, Garageband, and Facebook and thus attract customers back to the licit portions of the industry.

While some in the media industries have slowly embraced the power of the Internet, the laws have not been updated in such a way as to allow consumers to take advantage of the Internet using their media. For example, while digital music sales have taken off, there is no way for consumers to create content that utilizes that media and post it on the Internet. Copyright law, as it always has, favors the copyright holder. I do not wish to dispute that balance of power. Rather, in the age of the Web, I say that laws need to be updated so that consumers can pay some reasonable fee and utilize a song in a way that does not fall under fair use in a YouTube video or on their Facebook. Fair use evaluation today is too arbitrary, and the process too protracted, to allow for the embrace of the Internet. I exhort the media industries to wake up from their slumber and realize that they are in an age that could either be golden in the quality of its media production or gloomy in the lack of the ability of consumers to create new works using the user-empowering technologies of our age.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.