This model has of course given us some phenomenal successes but this process of openness needs itself to be opened up. Just as Microsoft trapped Apple into its financial domain by refusing to produce Office for their OS unless Explorer was bundled as standard, proprietary software traps supposedly 'free' programmers into their imaginal space by convincing them that they will have no users unless they conform to what is already known, what is already done. The surplus rationalism that has given us tools for tasks may be free in some senses but its springs a trap upon itself every time it stays too happy to accept access to code without access to its conceptual infrastructure. Just as you can only fully reveal a phenomena if it is already disappearing, Free Software is too content with simply reverse-engineering or mimicking the cramped sensoriums of proprietary software. Copying Microsoft Word feature by feature and opening up the source code is not freedom.
Mimesis is misery.
Where it seems open or free approaches are most fruitful at present is in small software, making specific interventions to precise technical, economic and social problematics. Particular bottlenecks to the distributed circulation of information are broken through, often of course using simple surplus rationalism as their crowbar. Despite the legal problems it encountered, the recent open DVD player, DeCSS, is a strong example. This strategy of focussing on precise technical conflicts needs now to be intensified by drawing in antagonisms from supposedly separate fields. Geek drives to innovation must, as awkwardly and confusingly as it will happen, be coupled with the drive to make language, to cut the word up, open, and into process.