[TOS] Start of the school year -- what are people doing for fall semester?

[Ivaylo Ganchev]

Hello Mel et al,

> They both talk about a FOSS hacker culture that may have been more
> present in the 90's or a bit past that; the waters nowadays are larger,
> broader, far more complex, and don't hew to any one Grand Unified
> Theory. I would love to see more things out there acknowledge the
> shifting boundaries and multiple perspectives instead of trying to
> trumpet an oversimplified One Right Answer as the only thing that ought
> to be perpetuated.

Indeed it would be nice to be a bit less ideological and a bit more
pragmatic when addressing floss issues. There are some nice articles I
fell upon lately : http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20120809-00 which is a
resume of this paper : http://www.econ-pol.unisi.it/quaderni/645.pdf. It
is question of the motivation that goes beyond financial, fame, etc... The
author argues that the ethical motivation had a main role in the success
of free software.

I assisted last month a conference by Yann Moulier-Boutang -- a French
economist and philosopher. In his latest book "L'abeille et l'économiste"
(The bee and the Economist), not yet translated in English thought, he
argues that our economy is turning into a pollination based one. During
the conference he stated that the main value of bees' work is not in the
honey or other byproducts of the hive, but in the pollination they are
doing while producing the honey (thousand times more valuable in terms of
money). He stated that the free software much in the same way pollinates
the whole digital ecosystem and the main value is not in the programs but
in the ideas, knowledge, algorithms spreading. I find this idea appealing
and worth looking at it more in depth. Didn't read the book yet, but I
think is worth it.

On another account I think that the works of Michael Polanyi about
knowledge (his concept of "tacit knowledge" is IMHO easy to be discovered
in the floss practices) and learning are very interesting. Maybe it will
help you in your quest of convergence. Indeed he was a rough critique of
the reductionism in science.

Best,
Ivaylo

PS I am still waiting for your answer about whether you could come to OWF
in October (we have the budget) or you could recommend someone to us.

--
Ivaylo Ganchev
System administrator
Lecturer
UFR MITSIC
Université Paris 8
tél: 01 49 40 64 08
e-mail: ivaylo.ganchev at univ-paris8.fr