Free software and the economics of information justice

Abstract

Claims about the potential of free software to reform the production and distribution of software are routinely countered by skepticism that the free software community fails to engage the pragmatic and economic 'realities' of a software industry. We argue to the contrary that contemporary business and economic trends definitively demonstrate the financial viability of an economy based on free software. But the argument for free software derives its true normative weight from social justice considerations: the evaluation of the basis for a software economy should be guided by consideration of the social and cultural states which are the ultimate goals of any economic arrangement. That is, the software economy should be evaluated in light of its ability to provide justice. We conclude with a discussion of possible avenues for reform.

Free your ‘most open’ Android: a comparative discourse analysis on Android

“…(1) use a program for any purpose, without restrictions, such as date, purpose, or geographic area, (2) study workings of a program and adapt to own needs, without placing any legal or technical restrictions to access and modify the source code, (3) improve the program, and (4) release it back to the public, so that the whole community benefits (known as the reciprocity principle) (see also : Chopra & Dexter, 2011;Sullivan, 2011;Wolf et al, 2009). What came to be referred as Four Freedoms was legally protected by activists into copyleft license, namely the General Public License (GPL) and its later versions.…”

“Power to the people”: Contesting urban poverty and power inequities through open GIS

“…When the source code of any software is closed, the means to produce and maintain that software will reside in the control of the owner of the software product. The actual software users are not able to view or modify the code for their own purpose, a form of alienation that keeps the full potential of the software out of the hands of the public (Chopra and Dexter ; Steiniger and Bocher ). Further, as Söderberg (, 10) notes, there is an inherent contradiction central to the political economy of intellectual property “between the low to non‐existent marginal cost of reproduction of knowledge and its treatment as scarce property,” allowing information capitalists to obscure actual costs of reproduction, and justifying the high cost of products.…”

The life cycle process of knowledge sharing in free software communities: Sharing profiles and motivations

“…The free software movement is the result of a technological trend that arose to challenge and criticize the copyright laws, and which has come to develop numerous variations regarding the nature of freedom in software development and artistic expression (Chen, ; Sullivan, ). Free software provides information justice, that is, a fair rearrangement of the social goods derived from information technology (Chopra & Dexter, ). Participants in the movement fight against proprietary software by developing and distributing alternative software products to those offered in closed source systems (Sullivan, ).…”

“…Free software provides information justice, that is, a fair rearrangement of the social goods derived from information technology (Chopra & Dexter, 2011). Participants in the movement fight against proprietary software by developing and distributing alternative software products to those offered in closed source systems (Sullivan, 2011).…”