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Ethics and Information Technology
Published in: Ethics and Information Technology 3/2011

01-09-2011

Free software and the economics of information justice

Authors: S. Chopra, S. Dexter

Published in: Ethics and Information Technology | Issue 3/2011

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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.
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Footnotes
1
We thank an anonymous referee for this point.
 
2
Eric Raymond (2003) succinctly defines the hacker ethic as “The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.” A fuller discussion is in (Levy 1994).
 
3
As an anonymous referee reminds us, arguments that software should be treated as property only appeared in the late 1970 s, around the time the market for “personal computers” started to expand dramatically. Stallman, in “Why Software Should Be Free” (1992), points out that many programmers are more than happy to turn over the right to claim ownership over their work to their employees, in exchange for a salary. So arguments about software as property should not be based on Locke alone.
 
4
In re Opinion of the Justices, 69 A. 627 (Me. 1908).
 
5
See (St. Laurent and Andrew 2004) and (Dixon 2003) for much fuller discussions of EULA restrictions.
 
6
See http://​www.​apache.​org/​foundation/​thanks.​html for a list of Apache's most generous corporate sponsors.
 
7
As an anonymous referee points out, this sort of informal consortial development, in which members of a software development community are employed by many different companies, producing both a method and results that no single company could emulate, is probably unique to FOSS. (The SHARE consortium of IBM users, founded in the 1950s, demonstrated the feasibility of this model in a significantly different technological environment.).
 
8
A recent ruling against business method patents—In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943, 88 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385—by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is an important step in the direction of removing patent protections for algorithms.
 
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Metadata
Title
Free software and the economics of information justice
Authors
S. Chopra
S. Dexter
Publication date
01-09-2011
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Ethics and Information Technology / Issue 3/2011
Print ISSN: 1388-1957
Electronic ISSN: 1572-8439
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-010-9226-6

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