Abstract
The free and open source software (Foss) movement deserves to be placed in an historico-ethical perspective that emphasizes the end user. Such an emphasis is able to enhance and support the Foss movement by arguing the ways it is heir to a tradition of professional ethical idealism and potentially related to important issues in the history of science, technology, and society relations. The focus on software from an end-user’s perspective also leads to the concept of program conviviality. From a non-technical perspective, however, software is simply a new example of technology, and the effort to assure that technology is developed in a socially responsible manner has a significant history. The argument thus begins with observations about the history of technology. This leads to critical reflections on the development of professional engineering ethics, and to a discussion of the alternative technology movement. Finally, it concludes by indicating some criteria to consider when imagining the design of convivial software.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
ABET. (1998). Engineering criteria 2000. The most recent version of this document, re-dated for the current academic year, is available as “Criteria for accrediting engineering programs”, at www.abet.org. The original document is included as an appendix in Lattuca L. R., Terenzini P. T., & Volkwein J. F. (2006). Engineering change: A study of the impact of EC2000. Baltimore: ABET.
ACM. (1992). Association for computing machinery code of ethics and professional conduct. Available at www.acm.org.
ACM. (1999). Software code of engineering and professional practice. Available at www.acm.org.
Adler, P. S., & Winograd, T. A. (Eds.). (1992). Usability: Turning technologies into tools. New York: Oxford University Press.
Borgmann, A. (1984). Technology and the character of contemporary life: A philosophical inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Callahan, D. (1998). False hopes: Overcoming the obstacles to a sustainable, affordable medicine. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Chesbrough, H. (2006). Open business models: How to thrive in the new innovation landscape. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
De Certeau, M. (1980). L’Invention du quotidien: Arts de faire (Vol. 1). Paris: Union Générale d’Editions. English version: The practice of everyday life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).
DiBona, C., Ockman, S., & Stone, M. (Eds.). (1999). Open sources: Voices from the open source revolution. Beijing: O’Reilly.
DiBona, C., Cooper, D., & Stone, M. (Eds.). (2006). Open sources 2.0: The continuing evolution. Beijing: O’Reilly.
Dyer, F. L., & Martin, T. C. (1929). Edison: His life and inventions (2nd ed., Vol. 2). New York: Harper.
Feenberg, A. (1995a). Alternative modernity: The technical turn in philosophy and social theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Feenberg, A. (1995b). Subversive rationalization: Technology, power, and democracy. In F. Andrew & H. Alastair (Eds.), Technology and the politics of knowledge (pp. 3–22). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Feller, J., Fitzgerlad, B., Hissam, S. A., & Lakhani, K. R. (Eds.). (2005). Perspectives on free and open source software. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Florman, S. (1976). The existential pleasures of engineering. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., & Borning, A. (2006). Value sensitive design and information systems. In P. Zhang & D. Galletta (Eds.), Human–computer interaction in management information systems: Foundations (pp. 348–372). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Goldman, S. (1992). No innovation without representation: Technological action in a democratic society. In S. H. Cutcliffe, S. L. Goldman, M. Medina, & J. Sanmartin (Eds.), New worlds, new technologies, new issues (pp. 148–160). Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press. Spanish version: Ninguna innovación sin representación: La actividad tecnológica en una sociedad democrática. In J. Sanmartin, S. H. Cutcliffe, S. L. Goldman & M. Medina (Eds.), Nuevas Mundos, Nuevas Technologies, Nuevas Perspetivas (pp. 269–286). Barcelona: Anthropos.
Harrison, L. E. (1985). Underdevelopment is a state of mind: The Latin American case. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Ignatieff, M. (2007). The rights revolution (2nd ed.). Toronto: Anansi Press.
Illich, I. (1973). Tools for conviviality. New York: Harper and Row.
Illich, I. (1978). Toward a history of needs. New York: Pantheon.
Israel, P. (1998) Edison: A life of inventions. New York: John Wiley
Johnson, R. R. (1998). User-centered technology: A rhetorical theory for computers and other mundane artifacts. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Kaasgaard, K. (2000). Software design and usability: Talks with Bonnie Nardi, Jakob Nielsen, David Smith, Austin Henderson and Jed Harris, Terry Winograd, and Stephanie Rosenbaum. Copenhaged: Copenhagen Business School Press.
Kelty, C. M. (2008). Two bits: The cultural significance of free software. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Lessig, L. (1999). Code: And other laws of cyberspace. New York: Basic Books.
Lieberman, H., Paternò, F., & Wulf, V. (Eds.). (2006). End user development. Dordrecht: Springer.
Lovins, A. B. (1977). Soft energy paths: Toward a durable peace. San Francisco: Friends of the Earth.
Martin, M., & Schinzinger, R. (1983). Ethics in engineering. New York: McGraw Hill.
Merton, R. (1942). Science and technology in a democratic order. Journal of Legal and Political Sociology, 1(1945), 115–126. Reprinted as “The normative structure of science”, in R. K. Merton. In N. W. Storer (Ed.), The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Mitcham, C. (1994). Engineering design research and social responsibility. In K. S. Shrader-Frechette (Ed.), Ethics of scientific research (pp. 153–168). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Mitcham, C. (1999). Why the public should participate in technical decision making. In R. von Schomberg (Ed.), Democratising technology: Theory and practice of a deliberative technology policy (pp. 39–50). Hengelo: International Centre for Human and Public Affairs.
Norman, D., & Draper, S. (Eds.). (1986). User-centered system design: New perspectives on human–computer interaction. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State, Utopia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ortega y Gasset, J. (1939). Meditación de la técnica. In Obras completas (1st ed., Vol. 5, pp. 317–375). Madrid: Revista de Occidente.
Polanyi, K. (1944). The great transformation. New York: Farrar and Rinehart.
Popper, K. (1945). The open society and its enemies. London: Routledge. Revised and expanded editions: rev. (1950), 2nd rev. (1952), 3rd ed. rev. (1957), 4th ed. rev. (1962), and 5th ed. (1966).
Raymond, E. S. (1999). The cathedral and the bazaar: Musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary. Beijing: O’Reilly.
Sachs, W. (Ed.). (1992). The development dictionary: A guide to knowledge as power. London: Zed Books.
Schumacher, E. F. (1973). Small is beautiful: Economics as if people mattered. New York: Harper and Row.
Scrivener, S. A. R., Ball, L. J., & Woodcock, A. (Eds.). (2000). Collaborative design: Proceedings of codesigning 2000. London: Springer.
Seffah, A., Gulliksen, J., & Desmarais, M. C. (Eds.). (2005). Human-centered software engineering: integrating usability in the software development lifecycle. Dordrecht: Springer.
Torvalds, L. (1992). LINUX’s history. July 31, 1992. A collection of emails with narrative notes available on a number of web sites. Accessed from www.cs.cms.edu/~awb/linux.history.html Feb 28, 2007.
Torvalds, L., & Diamond, D. (2001). Just for fun: The story of an accidental revolutionary. New York: HarperCollins.
Turner, F. (2006). From counterculture to cyberworld: Stewart brand, the whole earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General system theory: Foundations, development, applications. New York: Brazillier.
Weber, S. (2004). The success of open source. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Whitehead, A. N. (1925). Science and the modern world. New York: Macmillan.
Winner, L. (1980). Do artifacts have politics? In Daedalus (no. 1, Vol. 109, pp. 121–136) (Winter 1980). Reprinted in Winner, L. (1986). The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology (pp. 19–39). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Acknowledgments
This article grows out of a presentation delivered initially at the “Conferencia Internacional de Software Libre: Open Source International Conference” in Málaga, Spain, February 18–20, 2004. An earlier, less developed version appeared as “El software convivencial”, Argumentos de Razón Técnica, issue no. 10 (2007), special issue on “Eticas y políticas electrónicas: Ciudadanía digital, software y conocimiento libres”, pp. 19–41. Thanks to Andoni Alonso and two anonymous reviewers for comments and criticisms that improved the arguments here.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix
Appendix
The free and open source software movement: a selective time line
(Freely adapted from www.opensource.org, www.openknowledge.org, wikipedia, etc.)
1950s Software is normally distributed with source code and without restrictions.
1960s Hacker culture, emphasizing openness and sharing of software development, begins to emerge in academic computer science laboratories at Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT.
1969 ARPANET software is made freely available, which is a key factor in its transformation into the Internet.
1970s Source code remains freely distributed among academic computer scientists and engineers.
1978 Donald E. Knuth (Stanford Univ.) begins work on TeX, a typesetting system, which is distributed as free software.
1980 Scribe (CMU text-formatting program) is privatized; so is LISP (MIT).
1983 Richard Stallman writes the GNU (Gnu’s Not Unix) Manifesto, calling for a return to the public sharing of software and source code.
1984 Stallman resigns from MIT to create a GNU as a Unix-compatible free software operating system.
1985 Stallman sets up the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to support his and others’ work.
1989 Stallman creates the GNU General Public License (GPL) that defines copyleft protections. Copyleft allows anyone to freely use, modify, and distribute the software, but restricts their ability to copyright it or any modifications they make.
1990 Stallman is awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and begins work on a GNU kernel, HURD.
1991 William and Lynne Jolitz (Univ. of California Berkeley) describe how to port BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) Unix to i386-based PCs, making possible a free BSD operating system.
Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, releases a Unix-like open source kernal called Linux (Linus + Unix). See Torvalds and Diamond, Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary (New York: Harper Collins, 2001).
1992 U.S. Air Force awards New York University a contract to build an open source compiler for Ada 95, which is based on GNU and called GNAT.
1994 Marc Ewing begins the Red Hat GNU/Linux distribution.
First issue of Linux Journal appears.
1996 First conference on Freely Distributable Software, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
1997 Raymond publishes “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, arguing that open source licenses result in higher quality, less expensive software. (The essay subsequently becomes the title essay of a book, 1999.)
1998 Netscape announces that it will open the source code for Netscape Navigator 5.0.
Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, and Tim O’Reilly, arguing that the free software movement needs better articulation, form the Open Source Initiative to certify free/open source licenses.
Linus Torvalds and Linux appear on the cover of Forbes magazine (Aug. 10).
1999 Red Hat Linux and VA Linux go public.
2002 Junta de Extremadura (Spain) creates Linex as the operating system for its computer network, and distributes Linex for public use. Among other governments that have since adopted free and open source software as basic operating systems are Singapore (2004), Venezuela (2004), Peru (2005), Dominican Republic (2008), and Ecuador (2008).
2004 Publication of Steve Weber’s The Success of Open Source (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
2005 Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) founded to provide legal counsel to advance the Free and Open Source Software movement.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mitcham, C. Convivial software: an end-user perspective on free and open source software. Ethics Inf Technol 11, 299 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-009-9209-7
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-009-9209-7