Abstract (english)

Open knowledge on the net: the role of the open source movement (abstract)

The important declarations of Berlin in 2003 and Chicago in 2004 claimed a need to share knowledge increasingly via the internet, intended as a widespread source of human knowledge. Towards this aim, the Web of the future has to be sustainable, transparent and interactive; the contents should be compatible and open access, knowledge must be recognized as a strategic resource.

In the information society, the network is seen as a factor of democracy, a place where you can access knowledge in the form of data, text, music, books, movies, images. However, despite all appearances, not all knowledge is available to users of the network: administrative rules, law, private contracts prevent the free use of information in many cases, which, despite the progress of semantic interpretation of search engines, is not so easily found.

If on the one hand new mass behaviors are springing up, such as the illegal downloading of music, on the other hand, many components of civil society are wondering about the limits to the full spreading of knowledge. In this regard, the movement of the open source and the open access are involved in practical and conceptual aspects at the same time: the former is a community of information technology professionals and users, whose goal  is to exceed the software copyright; the latter, mainly in the academic and scientific world, has more generally the goal of open access to scientific and cultural information, through new and different forms of intellectual property protection to apply to magazines and miscellaneous publications, databases, projects.

Knowledge incorporates those properties which provide public goods – the principle of non-rivalry and non-exclusion – but it is also true that knowledge as public goods does not exist in nature like the atmosphere: to exist, and therefore enjoy publicly its benefits, it must be produced. In addition, it is no longer sufficient to divide assets into public or private, but one should also take into account the category of goods that are contemporarily public and private, as is the case of bio-banks.

Lastly, knowledge can be open or closed above all dependent on the willingness of individuals or groups – public or private – operating social or political choices; examples are: agriculture GMOs, pharmaceuticals, publishing that can be traditional – all rights reserved – or open-access –some rights reserved – as the community of researchers now so openly demand.

Open knowledge is therefore a property at the center of interests of the community and cannot be addressed simply with categories of fair or unfair, because of the spreading of unhindered knowledge is, first of all, convenient for the community: this is the lesson of Marcel Mauss with his study on the gift, and as demonstrated in the context of economic studies, theorists of advantageous cooperation, verified through game theory.

The knowledge, communication and its technologies, the building common sense, the development of the media and the space of writing have entangled our degree course.

In line with these issues, the purpose of this work is

• to present the social, anthropological and technological context;
• to highlight the relationship between individuals, communities and technology;
• to analyze the movement of the open source and the particular economy which it is an intermediary.

The sources. Within the limits of this work, I tried to face the topics through an interdisciplinary approach. The basic idea was born through the reading of the exam texts: Sociologia della comunicazione by Luciano Paccagnella, where he highlights the importance of open source movement; Lo spazio dello scrivere by Jay Bolter, concerning the aspects of the technology re-mediation. Other texts of the degree course have helped to clarify the context such as: Introduzione alle semiotica by Pieretti, Bernardelli, Bonerba, for the communication models and the extended concept of the text, critical to have a literary key of interpretation regarding hacker production; Antropologia per insegnare by Maria Callari Galli, concerning the notion of contemporaneity; Manuale di comunicazione pubblica by Paolo Mancini, in whose last chapter I gained the relevant aspects of access to public information with the introduction of internet in public administration.

In the essays of Ubaldo Fadini – Soggetti a rischio and La  vita eccentrica (with an introduction by Pietro Barcellona) – I grasped the anthropological and the phenomenological aspects of the current world on the net: Fadini makes important reflections on authors such as Lévy, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari.

In the conference proceedings “Knowledge as public common property” I found ideas about the regulatory, scientific and sociological side of open knowledge, through interventions of professors and experts like Luciano Gallino, Marco Ricolfi, Alberto Piazza, Lawrence Lessig (the lawyer of Creative Commons), Leonardo Chiariglione (the father of MP3 format). The essay Il sapere liberato, prepared by the LASER Group, traces from a historical point of view, the issues of patent and copyright, presenting some case studies, which show the possibilities offered by the use of copyright in open access key. In this context, I would mention some documentation on the web: the magazine online FirstMonday, with an essay by William Jones on Knowledge and information; the proceedings Open Access e conoscenza aperta: quali vantaggi per chi fa ricerca? by the University of Turin.

In the text by Sherry Turkle, La vita sullo schermo, one can grasp some of the themes found in American Cultural Studies as the search for meaning and the relationship between technology, the self and the community. Also the essay by Franco Carlini, Parole di carta e di web, through a popular and journalistic language, clarifies the relationship between technology and society.

Un manifesto hacker by Wark McKenzie – materialist and visionary – and the well-read essay the Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond provide the hacker’s point of view on the economy and the organization of work. The point of view of the market is represented in the essay by Thomas Stewart La ricchezza del sapere, where the monetary value that knowledge has in a market economy is highlighted.

Alla ricerca del medioevo by Jacques Le Goff – for a small micro-historical incursion on the code, the glosses and margin – and Saggio sul dono by Marcel Mauss – to locate in the economy of the gift the open source original spring complete the anthropological and historical picture.