Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Social Production of Productive Freedom

本学位论文的研究项目是一个民族志分析的伦理和美学承诺的自由软件的计算机黑客。它解决了以下问题：1）自由软件黑客的做法，法律的代码和社会价值观如何重新配置科学知识，财产和创造力的规范意义？2)黑客的道德承诺是如何从他们特定的技术和美学实践与塑造他们活动的更广泛的社会经济和法律的条件之间的相互作用中产生的？3)知识生产和保护的不同概念在物质和象征意义上有什么利害关系？自由软件运动的目标是使软件及其源代码合法可用，它挑战了软件生产的法律的私有化。自由软件是由成千上万的志愿黑客开发的。他们在互联网上集体工作，拥有法律的、开放的途径获得对其工艺必不可少的信息，将其理解为一种社会实践和表达活动，将技术创新与艺术创作相结合。这项研究结合了人种学和文件分析研究，遵循一个软件项目，并参加了一系列的论坛和会议在湾区。研究人员询问知识，财产和创造力是如何被黑客重新考虑的，她试图了解他们的目标和实践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.