7 Components: the Function Pages - Developers

The “key legal political invention” (Rilling) of the free software culture
is the GPL license. It serves as the basis of further free content
licenses, such as FDL or Creative Commons. Using such licenses,
and based on the respective national legal systems, an attempt is being
made to utilize the legal framework to secure open goods and
commons. In this regard, however, the discussion cannot stop at the
topic of digital and intellectual property. The question will be posed
with regard to the overall concept of civil ownership. When attempting
to answer the question, it could help to remember that the issue
of ownership does not focus on the relationship between a person
and a thing, but rather the relationship between people with reference
to a thing.
22.2.3
Forms of Work
It has been hinted at various occasions that the wiki philosophy inspires
one to rethink the future organization of work. Centrally
planned, controlled and regulated organizational models are countered
with those that are decentralized and self-organized. One motive
for this is that the tendency to subject work processes to bureaucratic
controls (for instance in the course of quality or issue management)
limits room for design and suffocates any intrinsic motivation.
As early as the introduction of Linux, the free software movement
not only confronted Windows with a new operating system,
but also with a decentralized and democratic organizational philosophy.
Alternatives are being sought to heteronymous and estranged
work relationships, which ultimately also affect one's entire lifestyle,
private life and the organization of one's free time. Some of the defenders
of free software see here the budding of a new, noncapitalistic
social order and hope that the production methods of
programmers can be carried over to other social realms.
In this regard, wikis are one in a series of free software success stories.
It is being proven that, as in the case of other software projects,
free work forms can be employed to surmount even complex problems.
In the long run, their products and services will even demonstrate
a high degree of permanence, because more people are involved
in the development process right from the start.
The extent to which Linux and the wiki philosophy are already
examples of true counter-concepts thus remains to be seen. The Net
world is currently an anarchistic one, yet it also reproduces existing
control models. During the Linux debate, Nuss already argued that
Legal political
initiatives
Alternative
organisation
models
Counterconcepts?
22.2 Wikis as an Engine for Social Change? �
�
�
355