Editing and the Crisis of Open Source
Authors: Thake William 
Published: October 2020

The Free Software movement that began in 1985 and the newer “open source” movement, represented a serious threat to traditional methods of production and distribution. The idea of a non-proprietary method of cultural exchange was and is a radical departure from traditional models that have come to restrict creativity and free exchange. In the ensuing years, there was a gradual drift away from ideas of non-proprietary toward ideas of access to software’s code level. This mirrored an evident diffusion of these “open” ideas into the cultural sphere. Open publishing, open editing, open music, and open culture are now hip buzzwords that point toward a new cultural formation based on a more free exchange of ideas. But contrary to the grand proclamations of some, what we are witnessing is the capture and transformation of elements threatening to capitalism, and a repackaging of open source concepts to be useful in a new flexible labor environment.
One of the fundamental issues at stake in the open source debate is ownership of the text. There are media projects currently at work that completely destabilize concepts of ownership and copyright, projects that have the chance to point toward an altogether new, non-proprietary future. Indymedia.org was one of the forerunners of open publishing, a method by which readers could upload an article and contribute to any article’s meaning by appending comments directly afterwards. One step forward in this trend is the creation of the Wiki; those message boards with a funny name that allow users to actually re-create the text in question, functioning as author/editors with or without authority. The consequences for traditional ideas of textual editing are startling.
There is a distinct division between Free Software and open source, as the latter was created to clear up the confusions of the former concept “free.” “Free” was confused with zero-cost, and was initially intended as “free speech, not free beer” to quote an oft-repeated phrase. Wikipedia.org, an open source encyclopedia, describes this conflict of terms.
It was hoped that the usage of the newer term “open source” would eliminate such ambiguity, and would also be easier to “market” to business users (who might mistakenly associate “free software” with anti-commericalism). Since its introduction, however, the “open source” label has been criticized for fostering an ambiguity of a different kind: that of confusing it for mere availability of the source, rather than the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute it.
One of the early defects of “free” software was the perceived inability to use it in for-profit ventures. Whereas the Free Software movement thinks of the freedom of software’s code to be available to all as an ethical and social imperative, open source treats it as a practical issue. Both GPL and open source licenses can be used in for-profit ventures. “Copylefted” material must remain “free” for people to modify, but can be priced for people to buy
With the advent of the term open source, it now appears that everything is open source, or is at least sold that way. When not applied to programming, “open content” is used to describe a wide range of activities that have nothing to do with computer software. There is still the problem of terminology, however. People seem to have fuzzy conceptions of what exactly open content/open source means. One organization I worked with asked something to the effect of “if I provide free .pdf downloads, is that open source?” Still another seemed to think that having a Web site amounted to “being open source.” Of course neither of these examples represent true open content, since the underlying material cannot be further modified, only distributed. Perhaps it is the nature of buzzwords to be confusing to their users. The confusion surrounding the terms open source/open content, however, could be necessary to provide the means by which capital can organize around the term, creating new business practices incorporating open content when it suits them, fiercely defending their Copyright when necessary.
Wired recently published an article entitled “Open Source Everything,” in which Thomas Goetz tries to overturn long held beliefs about open source, one being its (justified) anti-capital bent.
open source is often framed as an attack on the corporate world at large. But in fact the open source approach can be a boon for companies. Licensing from a trusted collaborative project saves money and leaves the technology open to further development.
The article actually outlines different models that people are developing to fuse open source ideas into high capital-generating projects. One model is Wikipedia, an open source encyclopedia invented by Jimmy Wales in 2001. In 2003, Wikipedia has “surpassed Brittannica.com in daily hits” and allows users/editors to “apply their professional knowledge to a broader audience, pro-bono style.” Wikipedia also demonstrates the dilemma of open source initiatives like it: what happens when one wants to organize a product, perhaps even one to create revenue?
Next year, he [Wales] hopes to release Wikipedia 1.0, a peer-reviewed and peer-edited compendium of 75,000 entries, available to anyone, for commercial or noncommercial purposes. He’s even considered pulling a Red Hat—releasing an affordable paid version—before anybody else does.
The question of who would capitalize on such a thing is left in doubt, a sign that doesn’t bode well for those who helped produce it. As Wales says,

[I]t costs Britannica money to pay people to write articles; it costs to edit them. Those are all things we do for free. So how can they compete? Our cost model is just better than theirs.
It is a better business model for certain because labor is free, the capitalist’s one wet dream.

Perhaps not so curiously, the issue of labor is rarely discussed in the context of open source. When marketing to potential business users, one doesn’t trouble with pesky notions like exploitation. As businesses would like to outsource/open source their stagnant projects, they also want to capitalize on the creativity of a transnational, all-volunteer labor force. Why are there virtually no open source/open content organizations that seek to financially reward the efforts of their producers? Open content producers are certainly more numerous than its distributors. The dirty secret of open source is that while they made the openness of code and content more desirable to the business community, the same ingenuity has not been shown in the desire to create paid laborers. Perfect for a more flexible workforce, the volunteer is paid in “experience,” and “name recognition,” neither of which translates into any sort of income. The current wild-west nature of open source allows a very liberating idea to become a capitalist paradise: many people working on a project for essentially nothing and a concurrent ability to profit on that labor at some later date.
In case we were wondering how this new world of open source effects traditional worker/employer relations, the Wired article assures us that “[w]ith open source, the people are back in charge. Through distributed collaboration, a multitude of workers can tackle a problem all at once.” What the Wired article elides is the power differential between content providers and those who actually or potentially “own” the project. It creates a completely false idea of empowerment for “the people” which has nothing to do with actually reaping financial benefits from their labor .
Editing usually involves (for the sake of simplification) a writer and an editor, each playing a role with the text as the product under the microscope. The writer/editor relationship is something sacred in the field of publishing, since this is one of the only contacts expansive publishing houses have with their content providers. Textual editing is based on the authority of an editor and a confidence in their ability to navigate a text, applying the rules of grammar and style. As an opposing model of production, open-edited wikis suggest that when it comes to clarity and content, a large number of readers can decide what is best between them, and need not be subjected to the decisions of a small editorial team. Notions of ownership over the text become a moot point when unknown authors from all over the world are constantly reworking a single text.
The dangers of the open source crisis is that all current volunteered work will be debased to the point of becoming a new labor initiative of a global information industry. It could easily become the newest in a long line of strategies for capitalism to renew itself. Any desire to contribute to a community or to an organization developing radically new ways of conceiving cultural transmission will be squashed. Mega-conglomerate companies would both buy off talented open source/open content volunteers and outsource stagnant sectors to open source collectives, intending to reap benefits from later discoveries. But this does not necessarily have to happen, and there are possibilities being discussed (Matthew Arnison’s vision of Indymedia’s possible open editing future, for instance) for open content to radically undermine the current hyper-controlled domain of copyright. Under this non-business model, we could see texts that were produced by small, non-corporate, independent groups attaining the reputability they deserve by becoming even more open than ever, and by allowing the distinction between audience and creator to all but disappear.

Works Cited

http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~matthewa/catk/openpub.php>. “Open Source.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 27 Apr. 2004. 30 Apr. 2004.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Open_source&printable=yes>. “Open Content.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 26 Apr. 2004. 30 Apr. 2004.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Open_content&printable=yes>.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Open_source_movement&printable=yes>. “Copyleft.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 27 Apr. 2004. 30 Apr. 2004.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Copyleft&printable=yes>.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/opensource.php>.

Citation reference for this article
MLA Style

Thake, William. "Editing and the Crisis of Open Source" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture
<http://www.media-culture.org.au/0406/04_Thake.php>.

APA Style

Thake, W. (2004, Jul1). Editing and the Crisis of Open Source. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7,
<http://www.media-culture.org.au/0406/04_Thake.php>