Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Social Production of Productive Freedom

本论文的研究项目是对自由软件计算机黑客的伦理和美学承诺的民族志分析。它解决了以下问题：1)自由软件黑客的实践、法律法规和社会价值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条件之间的相互作用中产生的？3)在知识生产和保护的不同概念中，什么是物质上和象征上的利害关系？自由软件运动的目标是使软件及其源代码合法可用，挑战软件生产的合法私有化。自由软件是由成千上万的黑客志愿者开发的。他们在互联网上集体工作，合法、开放地获取信息对他们的手艺来说是必不可少的，被理解为一种融合技术创新与艺术创作的社会实践和表达活动。本研究通过跟踪一个软件项目并参与湾区的一系列论坛和会议，将民族志和文献分析研究结合起来。研究人员询问黑客如何重新认识知识、财产和创造力，她试图理解他们的目标和行为是如何在特定的历史时刻从特定的制度条件中产生的。

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.