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    Incorporating the Digital Commons

    Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software

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    Author(s)
    Birkinbine, Benjamin
    Language
    English
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    Abstract
    The concept of ‘the commons’ has been used as a framework to understand resources shared by a community rather than a private entity, and it has also inspired social movements working against the enclosure of public goods and resources. One such resource is free (libre) and open source software (FLOSS). FLOSS emerged as an alternative to proprietary software in the 1980s. However, both the products and production processes of FLOSS have become incorporated into capitalist production. For example, Red Hat, Inc. is a large publicly traded company whose business model relies entirely on free software, and IBM, Intel, Cisco, Samsung, Google are some of the largest contributors to Linux, the open-source operating system. This book explores the ways in which FLOSS has been incorporated into digital capitalism. Just as the commons have been used as a motivational frame for radical social movements, it has also served the interests of free-marketeers, corporate libertarians, and states to expand their reach by dragging the shared resources of social life onto digital platforms so they can be integrated into the global capitalist system. The book concludes by asserting the need for a critical political economic understanding of the commons that foregrounds (digital) labour, class struggle, and uneven power distribution within the digital commons as well as between FLOSS communities and their corporate sponsors.
    URI
    http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/37226
    Keywords
    Commons; political economy; free software; open source; digital capitalism; software studies
    DOI
    10.16997/book39
    ISBN
    9781912656424, 9781912656448, 9781912656455
    Publisher
    University of Westminster Press
    Publisher website
    https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/
    Publication date and place
    London, 2020
    Series
    Critical, Digital and Social Media Studies, 14
    Classification
    Communication studies
    Political economy
    Media studies
    Media, entertainment, information and communication industries
    History of specific companies / corporate history
    Sociology: work and labour
    Pages
    158
    Public remark
    Funder: University of Westminster
    Rights
    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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    License

    • If not noted otherwise all contents are available under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

    Credits

    • logo EU
    • This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 683680, 810640, 871069 and 964352.

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