Abstract
In programming software systems for managing different versions of source code are prevalent. This chapter discusses how such systems structure the handling and circulation of documents in different ways and through this create specific conditions of cooperation. These conditions result in different models, forms and formats of co-laboration, i.e. the parallel, partly coordinated and/or uncoordinated, partly planned and/or unplanned creation of source code. It is argued that version control systems suggest certain forms of use, which are codified in practice by standards, guidelines and codes of conduct.
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Notes
- 1.
In inserting the hyphen between ‘co’ and ‘laborate’ I follow Niewöhner (2014). This is intended to take the emphasis away from the concept of collaboration and to focus on the forms of organising participation and teamwork.
- 2.
This is the organisation ‘Bundestag’ on GitHub, which is not maintained by the German Federal Parliament, but by seven developers and data activists (as of 26/02/2018).
- 3.
Matthias Vogel proposes to understand media constellations as those ‘states of the world or events that arise or are brought about by the performance of elementary media practices’ (2001, p. 220 f., trans. MB). Compared to similar terms such as ‘media product’ or ‘media object’, the concept of media constellation does not focus on the character of the product as a work or an object, but on the practices of creating or performing and using media objects (see also Burkhardt, 2015, p. 50 ff.).
- 4.
I employ the term ‘logistical media’ in reference to John Durham Peters, who has used it to emphasise the coordinative function of media beyond their communicative function: ‘They add to the leverage exerted by recording media that compress time, and by transmitting media that compress space. The job of logistical media is to organize and orient, to arrange people and property, often into grids. They both coordinate and subordinate, arranging relationships among people and things. Logistical media establish the zero points where the x and y axes converge’ (2015, p. 37).
- 5.
Kelty defines recursive publics as follows: ‘Recursive publics are publics concerned with the ability to build, control, modify, and maintain the infrastructure that allows them to come into being in the first place and which, in turn, constitutes their everyday practical commitments and the identities of the participants as creative and autonomous individuals’ (2008, p. 7).
- 6.
CVS was probably the first central VCS released under an open source licence. However, the first proprietary applications for managing software code based on a client–server model, such as Panvalet or Software Change Manager, had been developed already in the 1970s.
- 7.
The described interweaving of software codes and social or legal guidelines is by no means specific to the area of co-laborative work with version control systems, as Lenglet (2011) has shown, for example, for the area of high-frequency stock exchange trading.
- 8.
It is also possible, however, to establish workflows that are characteristic of centralised VCS such as Subversion by making a central Git repository accessible on a server and granting write permissions to all developers.
- 9.
Alternatively, the changes can be sent directly via email in the form of a patch to the authoritative repository manager to have them apply the patch to their repository and thereby adopt the proposed changes.
- 10.
Besides GitHub, there are now a number of other platforms and open source software applications that do something similar, such as Bitbucket and GitLab.
- 11.
In GitHub’s report The State of the Octoverse 2017, the platform operators also smugly point out that last year Linus Torvalds had made his first pull request (see GitHub, 2017).
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Burkhardt, M. (2023). Version Control. On the Software-Based Coordination of Co-laboration. In: Gießmann, S., Röhl, T., Trischler, R., Zillinger, M. (eds) Materiality of Cooperation. Medien der Kooperation – Media of Cooperation. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39468-4_4
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