Greetings,
I'm a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) developer and I've come to
collaboration research and exploration more generally through the free
software realm[1]. While perhaps FOSS' most visible impact in the area
of collaboration, I believe that there's a good deal we can learn from
the more social aspects of FOSS that I'd like to explore at the
conference. In think on some level, this is probably something many of
the conference participants have thought about.
I've been told that FOSS Licensing will be handled at the conference
-- which is great. Another area I'm interested in discussing and
working with people on is exploring some of the less law-based but
more social models of collaboration that have worked for FOSS and the
ways that they are, and are not, portable outside of the FOSS realm.
While playing around with collaborative technology used in FOSS is
certainly one interesting thing we can explore (FOSS developers use
some fantastic tools that are variably applicable to other
non-software projects), I'm more intrigued by the idea of exploring
some of the social organizing structures successfully employed by FOSS
outside of the software development context. In the software world
"project management" falls within this area although the term may or
may not be somewhat contradictory in FOSS projects absent of highly
individualized control.
I'm interested in the idea of designing projects (whether it's
software or whatever) in ways that maximize the idea of both direct
collaboration and general reuseability.
Some areas of questions I have include:
- Picking projects: Clearly, some types of projects facilitate or
   encourage collaboration and reuseability differently. What role
   should this play in the creative process?
- Distribution: How does the way we distribute our work affect the
   way that they can be collaborated upon and reused? How can we
   distribute our works in such a way that they are more likely to
   attract and create communities of creators?
- Getting the message out: How can we encourage reusability and let
   our users and other artists know than our work is *meant* to be
   reused, modified, and expanded upon in the context of a culture
   where people are trained to not share?
- Attribution: What role does attribution play in the creation of
   reusable projects? When is attribution essential? When is
   counterproductive to collaboration through reuseability? Where do we
   find balance?
- Pitfalls: What is the price of reuseability? What are the potential
   drawbacks?
If people have strong feelings or strong interests in any of these,
I'd love to start the conversation now. I look forward to any initial
responses people have and more full blown discussions we'll have
later in some of these areas.
In terms of people I see working on this elsewhere, I think that
Projekts Oekonux[2] is one good example. There was is a theme at last
years Libre Software Meeting on "Extending Libre Software Beyond the
IT Sphere"[3] that seemed to be doing this as well.
Regards,
Mako[1] http://mako.yukidoke.org/biography.html | http://mako.yukidoke.org
[2] http://www.oekonux.org | http://www.oekonux.de (German)
[2] http://www.libroscope.org/article.php3?id_article=85
--
Benjamin Mako Hill
ma-*at*bork.hampshire.edu
http://mako.yukidoke.org/