Free Software is a set of practices dedicated to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. In Two Bits, 1999 IDRF Fellow Kelty draws upon ethnographic research conducted in a variety of venues—from an Internet healthcare start-up company in Boston to media labs in Berlin to young entrepreneurs in Bangalore—to show how the practices of these people have helped to restructure the power relations around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge after the arrival of the Internet. Two Bits contributes to discussions of public spheres and social imaginaries by showing how Free Software is a “recursive public;” that is, a public organized around the ability to build, modify, and maintain the very infrastructure that gives it life in the first place. Buy from Amazon

Publication Details

Title
Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software
Authors
Kelty, Christopher
Publisher
Duke University / Duke University Press
Publish Date
2008
ISBN
978-0822342649
Citation
Kelty, Christopher, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke University / Duke University Press, 2008).
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