| Name, Ort/Land: | George Dafermos, Heraklion-Crete/ Greece |
| E-Mail: | georgedafermos discover.org ('@' entfernt -- Spam-Vermeidung!) |
| Zur Person: | George is a libre software advocate for he recognises the value that open, distributed, collaborative systems and communities hold for humankind, regardless of whether they are software-based or not, and he has set to explore where those collaborative, massively distributed systems and capacities may be most applicable and beneficial for the common good. Meanwhile, in collaboration with the CGPL network of people and under the spiritual leadership of Professor Carl Vilbrandt, George is working on the Organis Project, an ambitious, yet pragmatic effort to develop a business-plan and organisational structure for fostering and helping sustainable micro virtual networked organisations grow and replicate like memetic viruses, modelled upon the evolution of the Linux community. A cornerstone of the work we are doing on the project is the Common Good Public License (CGPL) – a licensing mechanism suited for all types of technology artefacts. Some of the projects harnessed by the Organis Project are the GnuBook (open hardware at http://gnubook.org) led by Carl Vilbrandt and Gerry Gleason, NihonLinux (Japanese adaptation of Mandrake), HyperFun (F-Rep programming language at http://hyperfun.org) led by Alexander Pasko, KnoBot (Semantic-Web CMS at http://sourceforge.net/projects/knobot/) led by Reto Bachmann-Gmuer, and Mapping Contemporary Capitalism (http://docs.metamute.com/view/Home/McCFrameworkDocumentV01June2003). George is currently employed by Go Online (http://www.go-online.gr), a EU-wide initiative that is run regionally through universities and other non-profit actors and which aims at providing small and medium sized enterprises with practical cyber-skills and helping them migrate their operating processes to the Net. George holds a BA with Hons in Business Administration from Hertfordshire University, a MA in Management from Durham University and a MSc in E-Commerce Applications from Sunderland University. He's now contemplating a doctorate assignment. Last but not least, George is a part-time independent author and researcher, focusing on the intersections of social and evolutionary economics, critical theory, media criticism, management, and action theory. |
| Links: |
personal blog personal blog Common Good Public License Organis Project |
| Vortrag : |
free/open source software community and counter-globalisation movement |
| Veranstaltungsdaten: | 23. Mai / 10:00 / 2 Std. / Track A / Raum 3B / englisch |
| Abstract: |
The main thesis and argument of the paper is clearly presented, and one can easily follow my train of thought. Most of the anti-globalisation fury is aimed at corporate entities, and in my opinion, the organisation/development model of free software projects, and the way the projects interface with commercial entities unveils a bew face of co-operation which is immanent to labour, and represents a fresh antitode to the suffocating blanket of pessimism.
In more detail, the F/OSS community counters the global pessimists on four grounds: Firstly, marketing within the community and marketing of F/OSS technologies is not coercive or corporate-engineered in any sense, instead it is of "the markets are conversations kind". Secondly, community formation, cohesion, identity and norms are of paramount importance for F/OSS development models to be fruitful and sustainable. And even though software is at the forefront of global capitalism, it hasn't altered or diminished the significance of community ethics or community development. Thirdly, as far as companies whose business and revenue model is based on F/OSS are concerned, industrial fragmentation and consolidation are avoided as a result of intra-industry sharing of information in the form of obligatory exchange of product specifications (source code)and indeed the political processes of the community dictate corporate behaviour and precede firm strategy. The proposed presentation will focus on answering how the F/OSS community and development models counter the thesis of global pessimists and exemplify an evolving, yet truly democratic and socially-conscious, model of globalisation based on community involvement, global co-ordination and local responsiveness, proliferating forums for democratic public discourse and community action, and partnership models between developer-user communities and commercial companies with the latter 'succumbing' to the demands of the former. |