Free Software
Thu, Apr 04
In this class we will continue examining the history of Open Source, but we will take a detour through the history of its earlier community experiences in the context of the so-called Free Software movement. From the 1970s communities of software sharing to the mid-1980s experiments with alternative software licensing, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) technologies have contributed to important aspects of hackerdom. Its importance as a set of hacker inventions is so central that, if we were to remove FOSS from all computers in the world, we would basically halt the Internet---and not only servers in data centers, but also most portable devices on the planet that run with Free Software.
After this class, you should be able to:
- Identify the historical connection between Free Software, Open Source, and hacking;
- Understand the basic differences regarding open licensing for software (Free, Open, or Not);
- Explain the importance for Free and Open Source Software for the history of hacking.
Our digital artifact for this week is, in fact, a legal hack, the GNU Public License, v.2 (also known as "copyleft"), which was used for licensing GNU software and the Linux kernel (which we examined last class and you got to use for the technical homework, if you are not already running it as your main operating system!).
The slides for today's class can be found here.
Read This:
We will read a chapter on the history of the copyleft license from an important book on the history of Free Software called "Two Bits" by Chris Kelty (2008). This history is a bit convoluted, but fear not! We will disentangle all of the Free Software threads and show how they stretch back to the first lectures in this class (concerning the early hacker community at MIT).
Do This:
Mitch Altman Hardware Hacking Workshop Sign-Up
Famed hardware hacking Mitch Altman will be running two workshop sessions for the class the week of 4/15. Sign-Up for one workshop session on this sheet by 5pm on 4/8. (Participation in the workshop is part of your class participation grade.)
Writing Reflection 05
See the instructions posted on the assignment's page.
This writing reflection is due on 4/9 at 5pm.