Slides to support a talk to the "History of Ideas Group".
- 1. Some advice:
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- Do what you can, confess frankly what you are unable to do;
neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your
confession silenced for fear of shame.
2. Connections: 3. Technology Technological 4. Ethical:
Technological Philosophical ethical 5. Legal Technological
Philosophical ethical Legal 6. Socio-political Technological
Philosophical ethical Legal Socio-political 7. Open Source
Technological Philosophical ethical Legal Socio-political 8. The
Locus of Control
Full control 9. The Locus of Control
Full control 10. The Locus of Control
Full control Greater Responsibility Little Responsibility 11.
The Locus of Control
Full control Greater Responsibility Little Responsibility
(Freedom) 12. Richard M. Stallman
13. The End of an Era
- An end to the sharing Hacker culture.
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- Non-disclosure agreements.
14. A Stark Moral Choice I could have made money this way and
perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of
my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide
people and feel that I had spent my life making the world a worse
place. 15. A Stark Moral Choice
- If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for
myself, what am I? If not now, when?
- The decision to start the GNU project was based on a similar
spirit.
- The name GNU was chosen following a hacker tradition, as a
recursive acronym GNU is Not Unix.
16. Build it and they will come.
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- 1984 the Internet was used by academics to communicate
through:
17. On Freedom
- Free as inFreedom -Not as in Beer!
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- The principal goal of GNU was to be free software, Even if GNU
had no technical advantage over UNIX, it would have
asocialadvantage, allowing users toco-operateand anethicaladvantage
respecting the user's freedom.
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- How can the continued freedom of the software be assured?
18. Copyleft: All Rights Reversed
- Flip over the copyright laws:
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- Instead of a means of privatising the software it becomes a
means of keeping software free.
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- Distribute modified versions of the program
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- Add any copyright restrictions
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- Subsume the program into restricted software.
19. GNU General Public Licence (GPL)
- In order for software to advance, it must have the four
freedoms.
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- Distribute modified versions of the program
- In order to learn improve and extend the program, the source
code must be freely available.
20. On Openess
- Prose is like hair; the more you comb it, the more it
shines.
- Gustave Flaubert (1821 1880)
In proprietory,closed softwaredevelopment, there is a rush to
market. Few eyes see the underlying code. The result is bug filled
code. If you buy a car you wouldn't expect your first journey to be
to the garage to have seat belts fitted! (no, not Flaubert) Inopen
source softwaredevelopment, thousands of eyes can see the code and
comb out the bugs. You can become part of the process if you have
the desire and the ability. 21. A Network of Development
- By the beginning of the nineties, much of the underlying
structure was in place. The central hub or kernel was proving
difficult to complete.
- Linus Torvalds was anxious to fill the gap. His kernel
completed the structure that could now be called a integrated
operating system.
Linus Torvalds 22. The Growth of a Community
- Contributors were world wide.
- Communication was via the Internet.
- Organisation was not heirarchical.
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- The Cathedral and the Bazaar
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- Concurrent Version Systems (CVS).
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- Development was much faster than the closed systems of
Microsoft and Apple.
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- GNU/Linux became the operating system of the web.
23. The Growth of a Community
- Who make up the community?
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- Users- just people who like freedom!
24. Unintended Consequences
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- 1995 Ward Cunningham realised that CVS could be used by
non-programmers to communicate and build up bodies of
information.
25. Unintended Consequences
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- WordPress, Joomla, Moodle
- Growth of Citizen sites: MySociety
26. A spur to co-operation
27. Opportunities & Dangers
Full control Greater Responsibility Little Responsibility
(Freedom) Open Source opportunities Proprietry closed systems (and
minds). Security. 28. And finally..
- How much does technology enslave us?
- It is not how much [information] technology influences us, but
how much we influence [information] technology.
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- Do what you can, confess frankly what you are unable to do;
neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your
confession silenced for fear of shame.