Version Control Tools: A Collaborative Vehicle for Learning in F/OS

In this paper we explore how version control software participates in learning within free/open source activities (F/OS). We see F/OS in terms of a product, and a community of people engaged in the process of its development, with version control software at the centre of all three activities as they learn and innovate. Learning is analysed through the perspective provided by Bateson's Levels of Learning, a relational model that stresses collaboration and conflict as drivers of learning and showing how conflict resolution may lead to higher and more profound or significant learning.