John R. Bork
The Free, Open Source Option as Ethic

A new pattern of technical decision making that has had a profound effect on the software industry is to consider free, open source options, wherever feasible, alongside traditional build versus buy alternative when designing and implementing any type of technological system. "Free, open source" (FOS) refers to the permission granted to users to freely use, copy and share technical products, and in the case of computer software, to examine, modify, and redistribute the source code from which the software is generated. The exact terms depend on the license with which the software and its source code are distributed, the most common being the GNU General Public License (GPL). Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation articulate these concepts including the definition of FOS and the term copyleft. The FOS option can be articulated as an ethical approach since it guides action and has practical, moral, and epistemological implications for being used instead of its not free, not open source counterparts. I leverage Carl Mitcham's approach to philosophy of technology studies to elucidate the practical and moral ethical aspects along the lines of the engineering and humanities perspectives. For practical engineering, I stress the importance of presenting correct, up to date information about free, open source software in computer ethics. This includes attention to technical details garnered from the technologist's perspective, and the utilization of empirical studies to counter misconceptions spread by both evangelists and detractors. For humanities the FOS option raises moral issues over the value of freedom itself, the obligations of government to provide unhindered access to public services, and the interest of sovereign states to control their national information. Additionally, I explore its relationship to Andrew Feenberg's theory of technological transformation and address the problem of the alienation of intellectual labor. Finally, I suggest that there are largely unexplored epistemological facets to the topic that arise from the synthesis of the engineering and humanities approaches. This paper is based on a presentation of the same title made at the 2007 meeting of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago¹.

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¹The current article is a version of a paper at the 2007 North American Computing and Philosophy conference at Loyola University, Chicago.