Open Coding Innovation: socially responsible, sustainable economic and technological growth
Open Coding Innovation: A Roadmap to socially responsible, sustainable economic and technological growth
(Copyright/Creative Commons and Digital rights Management categories)
Abstract:
In a time where economic and social prosperity are dependent upon society’s capacity to deliver, commercialise and fairly distribute the fruits of
innovation, the imbalance between the pace of technical change and institutional innovation poses an obstacle that ought to be overcome if we are
not to feel endangered by a world dreadfully out of control, in which technology is increasingly pervading our lives. Furthermore, evidence of widespread financial engineering malpractices and mounting dissatisfaction with the free market capitalist system have spread as a media virus overwhelming global financial markets and asking for a major restructuring in corporate governance. As a result, in the face of a global, networked economy where commercial exploitation of scientific knowledge gives rise to products and services which have a far-reaching social and environmental impact, such as in the case of genetically modified food and ‘zero-emission’ cars; the need to enforce upon companies obligations to communities is undeniable. To ease these tensions, a dramatically different approach towards social and economic organisation has to be enforced. For that approach to flourish, technological progress should not be viewed as an end in itself but as a means to tackle real human needs and societal concerns. But apart from a shift in common perceptions as to what better promotes social and technological growth, a novel form of licensing technological artefacts has to be put in place for the surrounding community to be empowered to act as and when needed. This license should be underlined by a dual character: first, to provide the guidelines for the structural organisation and management and most importantly, to incorporate clauses (that can be legally enforceable and initiated by the community) related to digital freedom, human rights and environmental sustainability. For all its advantages that we all celebrate, the GNU GPL is solely concerned with digital freedom while dismissing the requirements for human rights and environmental sustainability. This presentation will address this chasm and will propose solutions in order to cross the chasm.
In the organisation side, the most prominent example of such community –
centred organisation of distributed intelligence takes shape in the sphere of
Libre Software development, most cited 'success' of which is the Linux OS, the brainchild of Net-savvy software developers sharing the hacker ideology – a digital artifact emanating from the Internet – enabled collaborative endeavour of thousands of volunteers under no central planning. On these premises, Libre Software communities and development models hold lessons that extend well beyond the limited realm of software engineering, and replication of a robust framework might lead to invaluable advance regarding deploying network resources to enhance the efficiency of distributed development practices and trigger radical innovation whilst extending its reach to include human rights, community - accountability and environmental sustainability.
This presentation delves into the Linux development model with respect to its
management and organisational aspects, contrasts it to proprietary development models, analyses why going 'open source' is a rational business strategy and explains how to actually set such an 'open, collaborative community-managed strategy' into motion, and further elaborates on a wide spectrum of industries and areas where such a development model is most likely to become prevalent in the years to come. It also introduces the implications inherent in the licensing of technological products with respect to human rights, digital freedom, community involvement and environmental sustainability. Technological policy and a new ‘social contract’ (as reflected by a new form of license) between the community, the organisations and the society in general are of primary importance, if we wish to safely confront the unintended consequences of scientific extremism and corporate negligence.
The short bio is:
George N. Dafermos is the author of "Management and Virtual Decentralised Networks: The Linux Project", published in First Monday - the peer reviewed academic journal on the Internet. He is a business graduate from the Hertfordshire Business School, UK and holds two masters' degrees in Management and E-Commerce Applications from the University of Durham Business School, UK and Sunderland University, UK where he specialised in Innovation & Technology Management and Online Communities respectively. In addition, he holds a certificate in English from Cambridge University, UK. At the moment, he is consulting the CEO of Websystem Network Applications in the formulation of a strategic framework for product development and marketing of an Internet–enabled learning environment, called iLearn, and has embarked on the 'Organis Project’ which he currently leads together with Professor Carl Vilbrandt (Aizu University, Japan), an ambitious, nonetheless pragmatic, effort to create and support a sustainable business plan and virtual networked organisation based on the Greater Good Public License (GGPL) [http://www.ggpl.org]. The GGPL will provide the cornerstone around which an organic style of governance will unfold to harness the development and marketing of libre software and hardware projects. The first project to emerge in alignment with the principles inscribed in the GGPL (environmental sustainability, digital freedom and protection of human rights) is the GNUbook [http://www.u-aizu.ac.jp/~vilb/gnub.html] led by Gerry Gleason. In essence, the Organis project focuses on laying the foundations on which virtual networked communities of practice will coalesce around a project to form self-sustainable libre software and hardware organisations. George is also involved in the 'Free People - Free Methods' project [http://www.libroscope.org]. In all, George feels that interacting online with others who share the same interest is quite an exciting journey and is convinced that Libre Software communities hold lessons that extend well
beyond the limited scope of software engineering. On these premises, he is
exploring the viability of Libre Software development models in other
industries and whether their implementation is likely to be fruitful and bring
innovative forms of organisational designs into life.