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Free Software As Commons FREE SOFTWARE AS COMMONS BETWEEN INFORMATIONAL CAPITALISM AND A NEW MODE OF PRODUCTION By Emrah Irzık Submitted to Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Professor Jakob Rigi CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2015 Statement I hereby state that the thesis contains no material accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Emrah Irzık Budapest, November 2015 CEU eTD Collection Abstract Free Software is a particular way of organizing the production and distribution of software that offers a solid alternative to the intellectual property regime by constituting an open commons: non-proprietary, created and held in common by all. Considering that in contemporary capitalism a significant amount of wealth is created through the application of intellectual effort to existing knowledge to produce new, higher compositions of knowledge that can be privately monetized as intellectual property, the challenge that Free Software might present to capitalism is bound to have important transformational potential. This potential needs to be studied both on an empirical level, in its partial and concrete manifestations in actual projects, and investigated more theoretically, to see if Free Software can be characterized as a nascent, new mode of production. This dissertation aims to contribute to the theorization of the relation between Free Software as a commons and the tenets of informational capitalism by means of an analytical study that is supported by an ethnography of a particular instance of Free Software as a project and a community. In the theoretical part, I analyze in what ways and to what extent Free Software is incorporated into and comes into conflict with informational capitalism. I consider the contributions as well as the limitations of the liberal progressive and classical revolutionary perspectives on Free Software, pointing out the necessity of seeking to explain it as a revolutionary mode of production on its own terms, as the 'transcendent synthesists' do. CEU eTD Collection I then move on to contribute to such an explanation by analyzing three major aspects of Free Software with a claim to capture what is idiosyncratic in it as a mode of production: the forms of remuneration for labor, the emerging class position of the producers, and a specific, radical form of decision making within the sphere of production. My empirical analysis consists of an ethnographic study of the Free Software community in Turkey with a focus on the Pardus project, the largest experiment with Free Software production undertaken yet in Turkey, under the aegis of the Scientific and Technological Research Council. It seeks to exemplify and complicate my theoretical characterizations by focusing on the community of various actors such as volunteers, employees, users, and academics within and around the project. By means of extended interviews with Pardus programmers, the observation of public conventions, online ethnography of convention archives, social media sites, blogs, and related company or university web pages, I explore how the development of the project is influenced by institutional and cultural-political concerns, the different motivations and perceptions of individuals participating in it, and the social movement aspect of the Free Software community. The Pardus project's bell-shaped historical trajectory of success and its entanglement in Turkish politics reveal important insights into the uneasy relationship of Free Software with capitalism on both micro and nation-state scales. CEU eTD Collection Table of Contents ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................................. TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................................................... LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.................................................................................................................... PROLOGUE.............................................................................................................................................1 1. INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................4 PART I: THEORY...................................................................................................................20 2. THREE MOMENTS OF THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT.....................................................20 2.1 Conflict and Adaptation in the Market: The Liberal Progressives.................................22 2.2 A New Mode of Production: The Classical Revolutionaries...........................................31 2.3 A Revolution of Sublation: The Transcendent Synthesists..............................................39 3. THE IDIOSYNCRASY OF THE FREE SOFTWARE MODE OF PRODUCTION......................50 3.1 Concentric Circles of Remuneration...............................................................................50 3.1.1 What About Copyfarleft?........................................................................................64 3.1.2 Moving Towards Circle 4: Basic Income...............................................................74 3.2 A New Class?..................................................................................................................77 3.3 Forking: The Highest Expression of Productive Liberty................................................87 PART II: ETHNOGRAPHY..................................................................................................92 4. SPACES OF CONVENING......................................................................................................95 CEU eTD Collection 4.1 Physical Spaces of Convening........................................................................................95 4.1.1 The Annual Free Software Days.............................................................................95 4.1.2 Istanbul Hacker Space.........................................................................................101 4.2 The Discursive Space of Convening..............................................................................105 4.2.1 Free Software and Business: Entrepreneurs, Interns and Small and Medium Enterprises...............................106 4.2.2 The Big Civic Tent: The Linux Users Association................................................117 4.2.3 Big P Politics at the Free Software Conventions.................................................119 4.2.4 Small p Politics: Socialization and Gender..........................................................124 4.2.5 The University Connection: Schoolwork and The Academic Ethos.....................126 4.2.6 Politically Conscious Free Software: The Organic Intellectual..........................129 5. THE PARDUS PROJECT.......................................................................................................137 5.1 Context and Background: The Story of Pardus............................................................137 5.2 Pardus Town Hall Meetings at the Conventions...........................................................150 5.3 Pardus Narratives by Pardus Developers.....................................................................162 6. CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................188 APPENDIX...............................................................................................................................193 GLOSSARY...............................................................................................................................196 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................................198 CEU eTD Collection List of Abbreviations AKP Justice and Development Party A. Ş. Incorporation BİÇDA Informatics Workers Solidarity Network BSD Berkeley Software Distribution BYOD Bring Your Own Device CHP People's Republic Party CRL Content Reciprocity License CPU Central Processing Unit CTO Chief Technology Officer ÇOMU Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University DIY Do It Yourself DNS Domain Name Server DPT State Planning Organization EU European Union FS Free Software FSF Free Software Foundation FOSS Free and Open Source Software GNU GNU's Not Unix CEU eTD Collection GPL General Public License GSOC Google Summer of Code HDP Peoples' Democracy Party ICT Information and Communications Technologies IDE Integrated Development Environment IHS Istanbul Hacker Space IP Intellectual Property IT Information Technology LETS Local Exchange Trading System LKD Linux Users Association (of Turkey) METU Middle East Technical University MMS Multimedia Messaging Service PP Peer Production PPL Peer Production License P2P Peer to Peer P2P Foundation Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives R&D Research and Development SaaS Software as a Service SaaSS Service as a Software Substitute SME Small and Medium Size Enterprise SMS Short Message Service TMMOB Chamber of Architects and Engineers of Turkey TRT Turkish Radio and Television TÜBA Turkish Academy of Sciences TÜBİTAK The Scientific and
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