[Events] Notes on History & Ethics of Free Software resource

[Dafydd Harries]

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 04:01:31PM -0700, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Shauna Gordon-McKeon
> <shaunagm at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ___2. History____
> >
> > * But did free software really start with RMS? In some senses yes, but in
> > others no - after all, the whole narrative you tell here is one of RMS
> > defending free software culture from an incursion of proprietary culture.
> > So how did that emerge?  How did software itself grow up?
> > * Bonus: starting the history before RMS might give us the option to
> > highlight a greater diversity of people.
> 
> Great comments. I've long been irked by reliance on lone genius
> creation myths by FLOSS when we know those have very limited truth for
> describing the way innovation happens -- instead independent invention
> is frequent, and invention arises primarily from a community of
> practice and knowledge. Emphasis on Torvalds/Linux other obvious one.
> But to make it topical instead of just my pet peeve, I wonder which of
> (a) telling story of how FLOSS came to be and what it is via RMS and
> Torvalds stories or (b) telling story of FLOSS more abstractly and
> with analogy to/continuation with older computing and tinkering and
> scientific history -- would actually make FLOSS ethics more
> interesting and compelling for newcomers, and more diverse newcomers?
> I admit that most people like hero stories a *lot* more than I do.

I think this effect is not confined to free software narratives: people are
attached to Great Man narratives in all sorts of historical explanations. How
much can we credit LBJ with passing civil rights legislation? Clearly he
played a part, but there is a lot of context too.

Perhaps we can play to these narratives while also taking care to talk about
broader cultural contexts and developments.