How Free Become Open and Everything Else Under the Sun

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has been adopted as a political tool by leftist activists. At the same time, it has been embraced by large corporations to extend profits and has been criticized as an integral force in late capitalism. It has been adopted by members of the growing Commons movement as a model for limiting the power of capitalism. This essay attempts to confront the variability of these relationships through a cursory analysis of each field and through an look at FOSS philosophy and practice. It argues that Free Software exists as a politically agnostic field of practice–built on and through a broadly defined philosophy. It analyzes the way that this philosophy is well suited for the spread of FOSS technologies and its translation into the terms of radically different, even oppositional, social and political movements.