John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Faculty Research Working Papers Series Code as Governance, The Governance of Code Serena Syme and L. Jean Camp April 2001 RWP01-014 The views expressed in the KSG Faculty Research Working Paper Series are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the John F. Kennedy School of Government or Harvard University. All works posted here are owned and copyrighted by the author(s). Papers may be downloaded for personal use only. THE GOVERNANCE OF CODE: CODE AS GOVERNANCE Page: 1 THE GOVERNANCE OF CODE: CODE AS GOVERNANCE Serena Syme1 L. Jean Camp2 Masters of Public Policy Assistant Professor Kennedy School of Government Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02138 Cambridge, MA 02138
[email protected] [email protected] 617-596-4738 617-496-6331 www.ljean.net The governance of a network society is tightly bound to the nature of property rights created for information. The establishment of a market involves the development of a bundle of rights that both create property and define the rules under which property-based transactions might occur. The fundamental thesis of this work is that the creation of property through licensing offers different views of the governance of the network society. Thus this article offers distinct views of the network society drawn from examinations of the various forms of governance currently applied to code, namely: open code licensing, public domain code, proprietary licenses, and the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). The open code licenses addressed here are the GNU Public License, the BSD license, the artistic license, and the Mozilla license.