Openness and freedom are important themes that several theorists have posited throughout the exploration of this course. The implications of these notions continue to resonate from one text to another, harping upon similar benefits and complications that arise from the essential nature of these two terms in relation to public/private, socio-political, and technological domain. Biella Coleman discusses in detail the movement of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) in her essay “How Free Became Open and Everything Else Under the Sun”. This push for free software, and open source software relates back to Keenan’s essay “Windows: of Vulnerability” which discusses the roles of windows in society, and public versus internal notions of self.
The opening of source code to the public is a direct link to the internal self. The television in Keenan’s article is questioned as to being a window “out onto the world, presenting a view of the distant”, or an intrusion “into the home… transforming space, transporting the ‘world’ into the homes of the world—opening them up and facilitating the arrival of the image and the other” (Keenan 130). The computer can be considered an additional window, one that now opens itself in a sinusoidal harmony between external and internal influences. One can now actively manipulate this window, having influence over it, instead of passively being transformed by it. Open source software raises this question of the double window, one that allows for a dual permeability, a constant flow from one to the other.
Coleman discusses how this openness to change is inherent in the idea of FOSS. That is the major benefit of FOSS but also can be viewed as negative to the person. Coleman asserts that FOSS’ “philosophy simply states that it is the right of every user to use, distribute, modify and redistribute computer software for any purpose” (Coleman), as being four essential freedoms. Freedom to do as one wishes, building upon and adding to others work is the perfect unification of minds in effort to create the most advancing programs. Keenan would argue that these ‘freedoms’ associated with this completely public software is not as freeing as we are led to believe. The allowance of one to imprint themselves on a software is their succumbing to light of the public bleeding into them through their computer screen. “In public, exposed to the blinding light of the other, I am without precisely the self-possession that would otherwise constitute my freedom. The enlightenment of this other light opens me not by freeing me but by exposing me, to all that is different in and beyond me.” (Keenan 136)
The question that arises from the conversation of these two texts is what is at stake? If the public “takes the form of nothing so much as a foreign body” (keenan 136) then it is an unperceivable invasion that occurs through the window of the computer screen. However there lies in this invasion the ability of the user to be proactive in their own individuality by transforming, and exploiting the very nature of FOSS. Coleman talks about how IBM attempted to harness FOSS in an advertising campaign for their own devices, and how this could be viewed as the capitalist spirit pervading into the freedom of FOSS, in the “late-capitalist movement” of exploiting free or cheap labor. However there are also opposing groups such IMCs (Independent Media Centers) whose mission is to “allow activists to directly make, move, and ‘become’ the media. (Coleman). To ‘become’ the media is the essential complication of this movement.
What is one sacrificing to being a part of FOSS? This is the ‘vulnerability’ that Keenan discusses. “Why do humans want windows?” (Keenan 131) There is an innate desire to become a part of something larger than oneself. Keenan talks about how in the public one is “neither absent nor captive” (Keenan 136). Keenan quotes Blanchot, “it is the other who exposes me to ‘unity’” (136), this unity that will connect everyone in one medium, that of FOSS. However with this unity comes the issue of individuality, what do we give up when we become part of a larger entity? Keenan furthers his argument with Blanchot again, saying that the other’s exposing us to this innate unity causes me, the individual, “to believe in an irreplaceable singularity, as if I must not fail him, all the while withdrawing me from what would make me unique: I am not indispensable; in me anyone at all is called by the other. The responsibility with which I am charged is not mine, and because of it I am no longer myself.” (136) Becoming a media, just like becoming anything, is an attack on a person’s individuality. To what extent is FOSS’ supposed freedom truly freeing?
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