Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

6.1. Peace, Love, and Linux
    https://secure.flickr.com/photos/kino-eye/39036635/in/photostream (accessed October, 23, 2011). Photo: David Tames.
    IBM’s adoption of F/OSS, while uniquely visible, represents a much larger corporate espousal that translates F/OSS principles into a neoliberal language of market agility, consumer choice, and an improved bottom line. While F/OSS is not universally embraced in the corporate world, IBM’s integration of F/OSS is part of a much larger corporate push toward open-source software as the basis of a service-based business model characteristic of post-Fordist capitalism.
    By leveraging volunteer work, IBM uses F/OSS as a labor- and resource-saving measure. Yet they also hire a cadre of F/OSS developers to work in-house on F/OSS software. In this respect, they are not unique: Red Hat employs a number of the top Linux kernel developers, Hewlett-Packard employs a small number of Debian developers, and other companies have similar practices. 9 Being neither totally independent nor completely directed, F/OSS development in corporations represents a hybrid between volunteer self-directed labor and paid, directed forms of labor that significantly speed the pace of development for some F/OSS projects (Lerner and Schankerman 2010).
    As I have argued, while F/OSS developers are critical of a range of particular corporate practices (a lack of transparency, abuse of intellectual property law, the tendency to obscure bugs, and onerous nondisclosure agreements), many see the corporate adoption of F/OSS as proof that their software is technically sound and superior. Many developers also personally value salaried work developing F/OSS as it affords them the luxury of hacking full-time on what was once only a hobbyist pursuit.
    It is clear that the licensing terms for F/OSS technologies allow IBM to adopt, repackage, modify, and sell F/OSS (such as make peace with, make love to, and sell Linux). The politically neutral form of freedom associated with F/OSS facilitates the reenvisioning of what F/OSS means. In the process of such adoptions and translation, new meanings are born, and the F/OSS network is extended and made more visible. In particular, many of the IBM Linux ads, like the one featuring Muhammad Ali that aired during the Super Bowl of 2004, made Linux an unforgettable household name. In the ad, a young blond boy (presumably Torvalds) is sitting in a sterile white room watching a white computer featuring black-and-white footage of a young but feisty Ali, who after a winning fight, proclaims, “Never. Never make me no underdog. And never talk about who’s gonna stop me. Well, there ain’t nobody gonna stop me. I must be the greatest. I shook up the world. I shook up the world. I shook up the world.” A much older Ali then sits in front of the young boy and encourages him to “shake things up,” thereby associating Linus and Linux with the underdog who won the fight and ushered in a technical revolution. 10 While the money behind IBM’s advertising machine makes its take on F/OSS especially prominent, the company holds no monopoly on the interpretation of F/OSS’s meaning and importance, as the next example illustrates.
    Alternatives to Capitalism: IMCs
    Also bearing a three-letter acronym, the IMC once represented the vibrant epicenter of a grassroots, people-based digital media journalism, whose mission and spirit could not be more antithetical to the goals of a corporate mammoth like IBM. 11 A worldwide volunteer collective of loosely affiliated grassroots media Web sites and centers, IMC activists make and disseminate locally generated media using various Web applications and tools. Indymedia emerged out of historic struggles against corporate neoliberal globalism policies. In the mid- to late 1990s, opposition against corporate globalization began to take shape among various groups across the globe. Ya Basta!, the Direct Action Network, and the Zapatista National Liberation Army were notable players, while the World Trade Organization protests in the streets of Seattle on November 30, 1999, registered a potent, distilled version of this dissent in an area of the world where spectacular street demonstrations had been in extended hibernation. Aware that the mainstream media would rarely report on these denunciations by diverse constituents (or would distort and sensationalize the protests), local activists decided to self-disseminate the news and thus established the first IMC