MachineMachine /stream

by Manuel DeLanda

The plan of the essay is as follows. I will begin with a few definitions of technical terms ("source code", "compiler", "operating system") which are necessary to follow the rest of the paper. I will then discuss a few of the ideas put forward by open-source philosophers (Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond) focusing not on their weaknesses but on their practical consequences. In particular, Stallman's achievements go beyond the creation of programs and involve the design of a contract (the GNU General Public License, or GPL) which has been arguably as crucial to the success of the movement as any piece of software. The spirit of the license is clearly informed by Stallman's moral philosophy but its unintended consequences go far beyond it. Similarly, Eric Raymond's attempts at an ethnography of the movement, and to distill "rules" which capture its dynamics, fall short of success but he has in addition provided good material to study those unintended consequences....