So there are times that I think “of course anyone remotely interested in Free Software, virtual projects, and similar endeavors” knows about Debian and its “strange” rituals. I am pretty mistaken, actually. Recently I have attended various events where it has been made clear to me that there are hordes of folks interested in the politics of openness, access, and free software who have heard about Debian but don’t really know what it takes, socially and politically, to manage such a project. Luckily I had the chance to spread some of the ‘esoteric knowledge’ during a talk at MIT for the Knight News Challenge winners and I have received many emails, excited and some surprised about the governance structures of Debian.
If interested, here is a video of my talk, which is quite short, so I don’t go into as much detail as I would like. There is a great audio quote from a Debian developer, taken from this class visit for which there is a podcast and which I recommend as well. If you can’t play flash, you can download the a video of the talk here (look at the right hand side of the page for download link).
update: Interesting blog post on Why the open source way trumps the crowdsourcing way that explores some of the issues I raise in the panel talk. I don’t think it always trumps open source but it is certainly a niche form of production that is useful in some cases but all too often confused with expert peer production in quite unproductive and empirically wrong ways.
[...] Interprete » Debian in the World: Buidling an Institution vs Managing a Crowd gabriellacoleman.org/blog/?p=2004 – view page – cached So there are times that I think “of course anyone remotely interested in Free Software, virtual projects, and similar endeavors” knows about Debian and its “strange” rituals. I am pretty mistaken, actually. Recently I have attended various events where it has been made clear to me that there are hordes of folks interested in the politics of openness, access, and free software who have… Read moreSo there are times that I think “of course anyone remotely interested in Free Software, virtual projects, and similar endeavors” knows about Debian and its “strange” rituals. I am pretty mistaken, actually. Recently I have attended various events where it has been made clear to me that there are hordes of folks interested in the politics of openness, access, and free software who have heard about Debian but don’t really know what it takes, socially and politically, to manage such a project. Luckily I had the chance to spread some of the ‘esoteric knowledge’ during a talk at MIT for the Knight News Challenge winners and I have received many emails, excited and some surprised about the governance structures of Debian. View page Tweets about this link [...]
Pingback by Twitter Trackbacks for Interprete » Debian in the World: Buidling an Institution vs Managing a Crowd [gabriellacoleman.org] on Topsy.com — July 8, 2010 @ 11:28 pm
It was a very pleasent talk. I was impressed about how you talked about the same things I’m used to see in a way I’m not used to think of them. It’s cool to see this social analisys of Debian. Thank you for it.
Comment by Marco Túlio Gontijo e Silva — July 9, 2010 @ 6:48 pm
Marco,
Glad you enjoyed it. I have a much longer version and would have liked to do something like this at debconf but the organizing is just taking too much time!
Will you be coming to NYC?
Comment by Biella — July 10, 2010 @ 5:40 am