Open Source Networks

Open source, or the open source movement, refers to ideas and actions advocating that the source materials used to create and develop a product—their source code—should be open so that any user has access to it. Open source can be seen as both a method of production and a political vision. Even though similar practices in production and development existed much earlier, the term open source came into prominence around the time of the global breakthrough and mainstreaming of the Internet.

The specific form of sociality and the decentralized and networked characteristics of the Internet functioned as a key enabler of open source practices. These include collage, found film footage, music remixes, and appropriation art. In open source culture, works that would normally be entitled to copyright protection are made generally available to anyone. Participants in the culture then have the possibility to modify the products, use them, and redistribute them back into the community. The rise of open source culture during the last decade of the 20th century is sometimes said to be the result of an increasing tension between creative forms of peer production that involve acts of appropriation on the one hand and increasingly restrictive laws and policies regulating the access to copyrighted content on the other.

The doctrine on fair use, which stems from U.S. copyright law but has had an impact on copyright debates in many other countries, allows limited forms of use of copyrighted materials without the permission of the rights holders. Artistic appropriation, for example, is often allowed under this doctrine. It states that protected material can be used for purposes such as criticism, commentary, research, news reporting, scholarship, or teaching. Still, the ambiguity and complexity of the fair use doctrine gives rise to an atmosphere characterized by uncertainty among researchers, programmers, artists, and other cultural practitioners.