Front Matter

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Two Bits

EXPERIMENTAL FUTURES: Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices

A series edited by Michael M. J. Fischer and Joseph Dumit
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2008

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS ??? DURHAM AND LONDON

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THE CULTURAL

SIGNIFICANCE OF

FREE SOFTWARE

Two Bits

CHRISTOPHER M. KELTY

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© 2008 Duke University Press

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞

Designed by C. H. Westmoreland

Typeset in Charis (an Open Source font) by Achorn International

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data and republication acknowledgments appear on the last printed pages of this book.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike License, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or by mail from Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, Calif. 94305, U.S.A. “NonCommercial” as defined in this license specifically excludes any sale of this work or any portion thereof for money, even if sale does not result in a profit by the seller or if the sale is by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit or NGO.

Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), which provided funds to help support the electronic interface of this book.

Two Bits is accessible on the Web at twobits.net.

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To my parents, Anne and Ted

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Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

Part I The Internet
1. Geeks and Recursive Publics 27

2. Protestant Reformers, Polymaths, Transhumanists 64

Part II Free Software

3. The Movement 97

4. Sharing Source Code 118

5. Conceiving Open Systems 143

6. Writing Copyright Licenses 179

7. Coordinating Collaborations 210

Part III Modulations

8. "If We Succeed, We Will Disappear" 243

9. Reuse, Modification, and the Nonexistence of Norms 269

Conclusion: The Cultural Consequences of Free Software 301

Notes 311

Bibliography 349

Index 367

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