Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Social Production of Productive Freedom

这篇论文的研究项目是对自由软件计算机黑客的伦理和审美承诺的民族志分析。它涉及以下问题：1)自由软件黑客行为、法律规范和社会价值观如何重新构建科学知识、财产和创造力的规范含义？2)黑客的道德承诺如何源于他们特定的技术和审美实践与塑造他们活动的更广泛的社会经济和法律条件之间的相互作用？3)在不同的知识生产和保护概念中，什么是实质性和象征性的利害关系？自由软件运动的目标是使软件及其源代码合法可用，它对软件生产的合法私有化提出了挑战。自由软件是由数千名志愿黑客开发的。他们通过互联网集体工作，合法、开放地获取对他们的手艺不可或缺的信息，被理解为一种融合了技术创新和艺术创作的社会实践和表现活动。这项研究通过跟踪一个软件项目并参加旧金山湾区的一系列论坛和会议，将人种学和文件分析研究结合起来。研究人员询问黑客如何协调知识、财产和创造力，她试图理解他们的目标和做法是如何在特定的历史时刻从特定的制度条件中出现的。

This dissertation research project is an ethnographic analysis of the ethical and aesthetic commitments of free software computer hackers. It addresses the following questions: 1) How do free software hacker practices, legal codes, and social values reconfigure normative meanings of scientific knowledge, property, and creativity? 2) How do hackers' ethical commitments result from the interplay between their particular technical and aesthetic practices and the wider socio-economic and legal conditions that shape theiractivities? 3) What is materially and symbolically at stake in differing conceptions of knowledge production and protection? The free software movement, whose goal is to make software and its source code legally available, challenges the legal privatization of software production. Free software is developed by thousands of volunteer hackers. Working collectively over the Internet, they hold legal, open access to information indispensable to their craft, understood as a social practice and expressive activity fusing technological innovation with artistic creation. This research combines ethnographic and document-analysis research by following one software project and participation in a range of forums and conferences in the Bay Area. The researcher asks how knowledge, property, and creativity are reconceived by hackers, and she seeks to understand how their aims and practices emerged from specific institutional conditions at a particular historical moment.