Guest Editorial of the Special Issue on Socio-technical Dynamics in the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Social World

This special issue is the first volume in academia dedicated to a qualitative inquiry on dynamics in the FLOSS development and implementation, even if it is not alone in this endeavour (see e.g., Coleman, 2004; Kelty, 2005). Such a qualitative inquiry challenges the universally vocal and normative way of depicting FLOSS culture and practices (e.g., a homogeneous gift-giving and volunteering culture). The special issue encourages a practice-based and holistic view to exploring multiple cultures and practices in developing, localising, appropriating, and customising FLOSS. It also addresses the diversity in FLOSS communities through asking how seemingly global FLOSS cultures are translated into different contexts and locales. The importance of such an emphasis on how FLOSS technologies and practices diffract as they travel is nicely encapsulated by Haraway (1992) in her optic metaphor of white light that diffracts through a prism and becomes a rainbow. In light of this metaphor, a piece of FLOSS software is never really the same; when reproduced and shared, it is both the same (the standard) and something else in the mean time.