Free software has achieved amazing things in many fields, one of which is open publishing. The application of the open source methodology to this sphere has created a new media force - one that has already had a massive impact on the world through its successful efforts to block the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US. That, in its turn, helped people mobilise against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in 2012, which is now providing a template to resist the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

1.
free software, free
speech
glyn moody

2.
30+ years of free software
 Richard Stallman (born 1953)
 hacker at MIT's AI Lab
 free operating system
 GNU project 1983
 "GNU's Not Unix"
 GNU General Public Licence
 written constitution for hackers

3.
20+ years of Linux
 Linus Torvalds (born December
1969)
 "I'm doing a (free) operating
system (just a hobby, won't be big
and professional like gnu)" - 25
August 1991
 Linux 0.01 (10 users)- September
1991
 Linux 0.12 (100s users) - January
1992
 Linux 1.0 (100,000s users) - March
1994

4.
15+ years of open source
 Freeware Summit April 1998
 Richard Stallman not invited
 avoid ambiguity of "free
software"
 "freeware", "sourceware", "freed
software", "open source"
 suggested by Christine Peterson,
Foresight Institute
 Open Source Definition
 other licences

5.
free/libre/open source
software won
 Internet
 the Web itself is open source
 Apache, nginx, BIND, Sendmail
 supercomputers
 93% of top 500 supercomputers run
Linux
 smartphones
 80% run Android
 embedded/Internet of Things

6.
what is free software?
 a philosophy (Richard Stallman)
 the freedom to run the program as
you wish, for any purpose.
 the freedom to study how the
program works, and change it so it
does your computing as you wish.
 the freedom to redistribute copies
so you can help your neighbour.
 the freedom to distribute copies
of your modified versions to
others.

7.
what is open source?
 a methodology (Linus Torvalds)
 Net-based
 open to everyone
 liberal licence
 collaborative
 modular
 produces better code, more
quickly, that spreads more
rapidly
 open innovation

8.
open methodology
 open content
 open access
 open data
 open science
 open government
 open hardware
 open everything...

9.
open content
 Wikipedia (2001)
 Creative Commons licences (2001)
 social media sharing
 Blogger, Tumblr
 Facebook, vKontakte
 Twitter, Google+, Sina Weibo
 YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo
 Flickr, Instagram
 WhatsApp, Snapchat, Viber, WeChat,
Tencent QQ

10.
open access
 arXiv preprint repository
 16 August 1991 - 9 days before 1st
announcement of Linux
 Paul Ginsparg
 knew of Richard Stallman
 knew free software, used it
 Public Library of Science (PLOS)
 August 2001
 inspired by arXiv
 public genome databases

11.
open data
 Human Genome Project (1990)
 collaborative open genomic data
 Bermuda Principles (1996): rapid
release of data into public domain
 OpenStreetMap (2004)
 collaborative open map data
 inspired by Wikipedia
 open journalism
 bellingcat.com (2014)
 "open source" information

12.
open science
 chemistry: Blue Obelisk
 "driven by a belief in Open
Source, Open Standards and Open
Data, expressed in code, data,
algorithms, specifications,
tutorials, demonstrations,
articles"
 mathematics: Gowers's Polymath
 astronomy: Galaxy Zoo
 100,000 people classified 900,000
galaxies

13.
open hardware
 Arduino (2005)
 single-board microcontroller for
interactive projects
 open source cars
 open source 3D printer - RepRap
 self-replicating
 open source code
 open source hardware

14.
open everything
 open source wellness shoes
 open politics (crowdsourcing)
 Icelandic constitution
 Finnish copyright reform
 open money
 Bitcoin Core (MIT licence)
 open blockchain

15.
open publishing
 applying the open source
methodology to publishing
 Net-based
 open to everyone
 liberal licence
 collaborative
 modular

16.
net-based
 "Freedom of the press is
guaranteed only to those who own
one" - A. J. Liebling
 the Internet is our universal
press, almost free (low barriers)
 overturns 5000 years of
publishing inequality

17.
open to everyone
 default setting is open
 vast majority of blogs are free
 removing barriers to access
 blogs are the antithesis to
earlier control of information
 completes revolution begun by
printing and literacy

18.
liberal licence
 refers to creative elements, not
the code
 encourages re-use (at best) or
quotation and linking (at least)
 indeed, mostly no licence,
because there is a presumption
that things will be passed on

19.
collaborative
 liberal licensing - whether
explicit or implicit - encourages
commentary and re-use
 replaces competitive ethos of
traditional publishing
 encourages building on existing
work
 introduces new ethics: always
give attribution and linkback

20.
modular
 multiple levels
 blogs are granular
 millions of them on every subject
imaginable
 can serve micromarkets
 basic unit is the blog post
 easy to write large numbers of
posts, as often as desired

21.
power of open publishing
 Berkman analysis: "networked
public sphere"
 "Social Mobilization and the
Networked Public Sphere: Mapping
the SOPA-PIPA Debate" (2013)
 Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement (ACTA)
 Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP)
 same trajectory as SOPA/PIPA and
ACTA

22.
a superior metaphor
 open publishing
 not an "echo chamber"
 cacophony of overlapping voices
 suggests inferior copies
 something far superior
 symphony of voices
 sometimes harmonious, sometimes
dissonant
 supersaturated solution

23.
have a "super" time
glyn.moody@gmail.com
@glynmoody on Twitter
@glynmoody on identi.ca
+glynmoody on Google+
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