darkveggy writes:

"From Free Software to Street Activism & Vice Versa"

DarkVeggy

Contemporary societies have now endorsed computer technology, to the
point of turning its use into an attractive social duty. But while some
computers power market-economy, other machines remain busy with myriads
of software alternatives, counter-initiatives & community offensives.
What follows is a quick walk-through some of the cracks in the official
computer picture; a surface exploration of the convergence between
digital alternatives and political subversives.

.:. FREE SOFTWARE: THE BIRTH OF A COMPUTED RESISTANCE.:.

> Analog recipes and digital bakery

Computers do not speak anything but binary language; that is, a
succession of 0 and 1. Since hardly any human can communicate in such a
way, intermediary languages have been developed for programmers to use
when creating programs. This human-readable combination of words,
punctuation and mathematical expressions is called "source code".

Software and cakes have a lot in common. Both involve a list of
instructions to follow, ingredients to mix, and a transformation process
to go through. Cooking is about producing and following a recipe, just
as programming is about generating and typing a source code. Just like
cakes, programs have to be baked too. The process of turning source code
into binary form that computers can eat is called "compiling".

Just as cakes can be cooked for you, computer programs often come
pre-compiled & ready to run. Fine. But what if the cake was so good you
want to bake your own? What if the program was so impressive you want to
understand how it works? What it you want to share the cake's recipe
with friends? What if the program lacked an important feature you need
and feel like adding? You need the recipe; you need the source-code!

> The birth of a hacker revolt

Back in 70s, The Artificial Intelligence Lab from Massachusetts's
Institute of Technology gave birth to a digital counter-culture: the
hackers'. Hackers [01] enjoyed computer-programming and bypassing
limitations by finding clever solutions. Rather than using the operating
system [02] that was shipped with the lab's computer, they had crafted
their own, and shared the source code with whoever was interested. Their
community was based upon the dissemination of software recipes, mutual
cooperation, and the belief that "information should be free".

Such sharing dynamics were to be seriously shaken in the early 80s.
With new hardware came new software, which one was explicitly forbidden
to share. It came without source-code, but with copyright, restrictive
licenses & high expenses. Users would be repressed for helping each
other by copying; software developers would be banned from cooperating
by sharing code; without recipes nor the rights, others wouldn't get an
occasion to learn, modify, recompile! This is what proprietary software
is about: companies claiming property over knowledge, restricting its
access according to their interests; selling expensive cakes, keeping
their operation secret, while preventing others from doing them better and
sharing them with the rest. Proprietary software is now a commonly spread
disease among personal computers, as shows the number of machines
running Microsoft Windows.

In 1984, MIT hacker Richard Stallman [03] quit his job, in a refusal to
abandon his community practices and ideals. He founded the GNU project
[04], aiming at developing an alternative operating system that would be
free to use, free to understand, free to copy, free to modify. Copyleft
replacing copyright; source-code availability, instead of binary-only.
To backup this emerging project, the Free Software Foundation [05] was
created, and introduced "copyleft" [06] by issuing the GNU General Public
Licence (GNU GPL), a legal trick to prevent illegitimate appropriation
of free software by third parties. One has the right to modify GPL
licenced-software and distribute his/her modifications, provided they
use the same licence, and thus grant the same freedoms to their users;
using copyright... to subvert copyright! That was the birth of the free
software movement, as a political act of resistance against proprietary
software.

The GNU project was met with enthusiasm and quickly grew out of the
benevolent participation of a number of individuals across the world. In
1991, a finnish student by the name of Linus Torvalds released the Linux
kernel [07]. Put together with already existing GNU software, it
resulted in the fruitful combination known as GNU/Linux [08], that was soon
to become the fully-featured & powerful operating system which is widely
used today. Then, free software was no longer a hacker-exclusive
playground, but had become a valuable alternative to proprietary
solutions; not only providing good programs, but, most importantly,
putting power in the hands of the users, instead of stealing it away
from them.

This is what free software is about: a digital revolution that is social
before it is technical. Free software grants user-power and flexibility
against the tyranny of a profit-making software company: source-code provides
the possibility for one to understand and double-check a program for bugs or
weak security, fix it accordingly, adapt it to new uses, or improve its
quality. Free software demonstrates the efficiency of volunteer association
& self-organisation, rather than wage work constraints & hierarchies;
it proves the benefits of solidarity and effort mutualisation, rather than
opacity and competition: it powers 70% of servers over the Internet [09] and technically defeats closed-source equivalents in most
cases, thanks to the involvement of thousands of individuals worldwide. Free
software breaks the boundaries between developers and users, rather than having
people rely on experts. It is based upon participation, rather than sole
consumption: anyone is encouraged to contribute according to his/her skills and
wills, by writing documentation, submitting program modifications, doing
translations, spreading the word and supporting individuals willing to free
their machines from the proprietary.

> When it backfires...

Free software was initiated as both a technical alternative and a
political offensive against proprietary software and values. While
Richard Stallman and other prominent figures of the movement have
maintained that dual commitment over years, it is clear that the
subversive potential of free software has consciously been eluded by a
number of parties. While large amounts of geek types tend not to show
interest in politics, thus passively discarding the militant approach, a
new tendency emerged against free software's engaged discourse. The Open
Source Initiative [10] was launched by Eric S. Raymond in 1998 to
publicly stand against the FSF's leftist tendencies, and set a new label
for advertising non-proprietary software - "open-source" -, with a
particular focus on business leaders, frightened by the "free software"
emblem.

Of course, building market-compliant sex-appeal, to be directed at
multinationals, couldn't go without dropping what made free software so
special [11]. The "Open Source Definition" logically abandoned all
reference to the social & ethical means & motives of free software, not
to mention the fight for freedom as a primary aim. Preaching for a
peaceful coexistence between free & closed software, "open-source" is
also about politics; but its politics are those of pacification,
integration, acceptance and promotion of the market rules, with the
slight difference of a smarter development model. Free software has
often been dismissed as "communist" by its enemies (and by Microsoft in
particular) [12]. It might not be that simple. What is very clear,
though, is that "open source" pledges capitalism, while free software
can be a contribution to something else.

Looking in the opposite direction to the Open Source Initiative is
another myriad of individuals, collectives and networks, working at
extending free software's political spectrum, merging it with ongoing
struggles, aiming to explore the subversive potentials of computing,
rather than extinguish them.

.:. GRASS-ROOTS ACTIVISM: ANALOGICAL MOVEMENTS MEET THE BYTES.:.

> Hierarchy, capitalism & property, among other nastiness

Contemporary societies all rely on hierarchies, as they have done almost
exclusively for centuries. Be they called democracies and pretend they
grant everyone the same freedoms, rights and duties, they involve a
political authority, whose power can override anybody's, provided it has
been once approved by the majority. Representative democracy involves
letting a board of so-called experts - politicians - deal with issues
concerning everybody and take decisions which will affect the whole
community, while the intervention of the primarily concerned is
restricted to electing a leader every X years. Such a system disempowers
everybody but a minority, for it draws away power & responsibility over
one's own life from the individual, to be centralised by a collective
entity, supposedly defending the interest of the many. Not only does
this result in the individual being systematically crushed by the
majority, but it also involves allowing a tiny group of people to decide
upon laws that will later be enforced on you and me.

Most governments have totally embraced capitalism, dismantling public
services and encouraging private companies to make their way through
market economy. Defining the maximisation of profits as the priority,
capitalism relies on the dynamics of competition and domination, feeds
the law of the fittest, and implies a permanent state of war in and
outside the economy. Placing the interests of a company above all
ethical concerns, capitalism leads to huge dismissals by favouring
benefits over employees, supports exploitation by delocalising
production lines and has work done nearly for free, commits massacres
and uncountable human-right violations while stealing indigenous
resources, generates mass precarity through the World Bank &
International Monetary Fund, which force developing countries to drop
their social rights for incoming money, takes the most prominent part in
destroying the environment, and tends to turn anything, being or
tendency, into a good, for sale in the global economy.

Can one believe a society to implement equality, when it relies on such
mechanisms, and distributes {social,economical,political} power in
variable quantities, depending on gender, race, age, class, sexual
orientation and many other such dividing categories? However,
discrimination, oppression and domination do not just occur inside
institutions. They lie within one's social relations, forged by an early
acceptation of hierarchy, integration through abidance to social norms,
a life-time education to authority, and our very own reserves towards
equality.

> Being active programmers of our lives, not passive users

These critiques are nothing new. They have been explored, deepened,
publicised, debated and fought about for years, by webs of collectives,
individuals, affinity groups and organisations often referred to or
self-defined as "radicals", "anti-authoritarians" or "anarchists", whose
history is far too long and complex to render in a few words [13]. Some
of them are part of international networks such as People's Global
Action [14], which actions eventually came to the broad public's
attention, throughout previous years' counter-summit demonstrations
[15]. Unlike most other political factions, these movements generally
attempt to go beyond the mere slogan, by putting their ideals into
practice: by confronting the politics they fight against through
actions; by coding, compiling and experiencing alternatives to the
current social order.

In opposition to vertical-organising, anti-authoritarian movements share
a tradition of self-management and assembly: decisions are directly
taken by those who are affected by them, without the mediation of a
hierarchy. This is about emphasizing individuals' power over their
lives, through collective concern and personal responsibility; about
working towards consensus, instead of some being silenced by the
majority. Despite the common & well-too-spread belief that freedom and
equality only require "spontaneity", activist networks have thought and
implemented some practical facilitation tools to allow efficient
meetings & truly democratic decision-making [16].

In opposition to capitalism, stand quantities of non-profit production
and distribution initiatives, be they about books, vegetables or
bicycles! The "do it yourself" counter-culture [17] is one of these
lively examples: a world-wide and long-lasting movement, successfully
opposing the reign of money over culture, by bringing together thousands
of independent music labels, radical book publishers and engaged bands,
exchanging through fanzines, spreading through mail distribution and
peer-to-peer contact, organizing music shows and tours, settled in
hundreds of alternative venues, private garages or squatted houses
across countries. Against economic discrimination, European activist
circles have made widespread use of "prix libre" for their public
events' entry fee: a donation instead of a fixed price, for the
attendant to adapt his/her contribution to her/his financial situation;
no entry prohibition upon money, if one doesn't have any. Among the
routes to escape capitalism, is attempting autonomy, by growing food,
producing alternative energy, and, possibly, code free?

In putting these alternatives into practice, one requires space, time
and energy. Squatting [18] has played a major role in the development of
radical-left cultures since the 70s: recycling abandoned buildings
allows appropriation of spaces for collective uses; not paying rent
reduces the need to work for money, thus liberates time for benevolent
activity; collective project-building providing energy and practical
experiences of self-management, with its successes, failures, and
difficulties; and all in all, allows further autonomy from consumer
society. Squatting the empties is a form of direct-action against
capitalism, the latter relying on private property. Ownership is a
virtual title, which grants the person in possession an absolute and
exclusive right over what s/he owns, might s/he not make any use of it
at all. Speculation is a fairly common game for owners to play. It
involves maintaining houses in an unused state, waiting for prices to
higher, while denying access to people in need. In opposition to that,
squatting empty properties is about reclaiming abandoned resources for
those who can put them to use; it is about placing legitimacy before
legality; it is about inverting dominant values, claiming that property
belongs to its users, rather than to its entitled owners.

> From hacking property to fighting the proprietary

Computer technology has long been met with skepticism and denial within
grass-roots movements, for being central in capitalist development,
enforcing government control and serving corporate interests. While this
does remains true, tactical use of technology as means of subversive
communication has always been part of political activism, as has shown
free radio movements from the 80s, performing pirate broadcasts to
"reclaim the airwaves", in defense of freedom of speech and independent
information. Yippie revolutionary Abbie Hoffman provides yet another
example, for being involved in phone phreaking, explaining through
underground fanzines how to exploit bugs in phone networks to
communicate for free.

In the 90s, activist computer use grew from producing flyers and posters
to disseminating content through the Internet, which cyber-utopians &
techno-anarchists believed to be a free & independent territory, back
then. Not only was early online computing largely mixed with libertarian
ideals, but it also supported the first marginal attempts at activist
networking. Internet was a big step in bringing together analogical
struggles to digital mediums, thanks to its decentralised structure and
bidirectional communication. Unlike television, this media was not
limited to consuming contents, but provided an easy way to organise and
distribute one's own information. However, the encounter that is
possibly to be the most fruitful involves two movements or tendencies;
one being analogical, the other being digital; anarchism & free
software.

Free software and anarchist movements indeed happen to share a number of
concerns and practices. Both have the ultimate goal of building a free
society, free software focusing on public empowerment through
availability of knowledge, anarchism on destroying power structures that
prevent their accessibility. Both are about putting back power in the
hands of the user: user power over tools s/he uses, user power over the
life s/he chooses to run. Thus, both destabilise established power
roles, based upon corporate and governmental models. Both advocate
solidarity, and rely on cooperation to function: free software
development depends upon team-work and collective emulation, just as
anarchism requires consensus, mutual help and consideration. Both lead
to reconsidering common perception of property: free software flipping
copyright upside down with copyleft and claiming that "software should
not have owners", anarchists questioning the legitimacy of exclusive
ownership and practicing resource sharing through squatting. Both
provides working examples of alternative social models, based upon
decentralisation, volunteer participation and self-management: free
software development is made of hundreds of autonomous clusters
organising independently, without a central authority nor any corporate
agenda to carry, coordinating willingly, while anarchist organising
usually involves similar affinity groups gathering around common
concerns, without a hierarchy. Against corporate opacity and elitism,
free software functions with transparency, allows everyone to
participate, just as a libertarian open-organisation would distribute
information and responsibility to all those who would agree.

By getting involved in free software, anti-authoritarians get the
opportunity to have their relation to computing shift, from solely
tactical considerations to a more exciting option: participating in
designing and building operating-systems in a contributive and
horizontal fashion, by putting self-management into practice, and having
the chance to shape egalitarian uses & applications. The Debian
GNU/Linux operaring-system [19], in addition to providing the Anarchist
FAQ among its software packages [20], includes anarchists among its
developers, some of whom have been debating the political nature of the
project as a whole [21]. While free software offers activists a number
of possibilities, in terms of secure & community-driven communication &
organisational tools (thanks to web portals, self-managed websites aka
wikis, mailing-lists), grass-roots politics allow free software
enthusiasts to break the bounderies of computing and insert their
practices within a broader picture. This opens up new questions,
provides new inspiration, and allows learning from the experiences of
other struggles.

Over the past few years, individuals from both communities felt they
could gain from closer interaction and mutual recognition. From geek
parties taking place in squatted communities, to free software powering
street action counter-information, a number of initiatives, collectives
and movements have emerged out of these hybridations.

.:. MERGING LAYERS, ANALOGICAL AND DIGITAL: IMPLEMENTATIONS.:.

> Plug'n'politix: opening access to squats & Internet

In October 2001, a number of groups and individuals gathered in the
Egocity squat in Zürich, Switzerland [22], for three days of
discussions, debates and practical workshops. This was to be the first
"Connect Congress" of the "Plug'n'Politix" network. The experience was
renewed in December 2004, hosted by Cyber*Forat [23], a squatted
cybercafé located in central Barcelona. Plug'n'Politix [24] allows
groups and collectives from all over Europe to share their experiences
in running Internet open-access spaces and hacklabs in squatted
social-centres or alternative venues. It provides a common channel for
information exchange, community building and developing a hybrid mix of
anti-authoritarian politics, free software development and activist
computer use.

One of the first groups to implement this crossover was ASCII (Amsterdam
Subversive Center for Information Interchange) [25], bringing together
computer-inclined political activists and free-software hackers. They
engaged in squatting actions, filling empty basements with keyboards and
wireless signals. Despise evictions, they successfully set-up a public
venue providing a computer workspace for local activists, offering free
Internet access to visitors seven days a week, as well as using,
promoting and teaching free-software. From 1997 onwards, similar
initiatives popped up in different corners of Europe: PUSCII in Utrecht
[26], LOTEC in Berlin [27], PRINT in Dijon [28], Monte Paradiso in
Croatia [29], Cyberpipe in Slovenia [30], Blouk Blouk in Lyon [31]...
among others!

Such collectives have largely contributed to raising ethical and
practical issues related to technology within radical activist circles.
Questioning the use of corporate and proprietary software by groups
protesting against the very same type of multinationals producing these
programs, they have been working towards integrating computer-related
issues to activists' political concerns, introducing free software as an
alternative. Considering the digital tools we use as a meaningful
political choice, campaigning was extended to bringing awareness to the
general public, by encouraging computer users to break their dependency
upon Microsoft, and start setting their system free!

While offering curious novices an occasion to give free software a try,
open-access spaces often put software's versatility into practice. Not
only are they real testing grounds and a good source for user feedback,
but they also tend to inspire creative network designs or resource
sharing experiments, in efforts to improve overall efficiency and
implement ecology [32]. Friendly visitors can generally ask for help in
migrating their systems towards free software alternatives, burn a copy
of the Debian archive, which some open-access spaces provide officially,
or grab a Knoppix, a Dynebolic or an Ubuntu live-CD [33].

Commercial trends keep forcing new hardware down people's throats while
dumping yesterday's, that is now ridiculed by the gigahertz race
happening everyday. Open-access spaces attempt at breaking the
capitalist chain by recycling discarded hardware, putting together
deprecated computer parts, and plugging dead boxes back to life. Yet
another demonstration of the irrelevance of productivism, when people
are told to buy, whereas the trash contains it all; it's the matter of a
dumpster to hack, and a handful of free machines to take back!

As computing becomes central, digital illiteracy grows tall. By
organising free teaching and skill-sharing workshops to disseminate
computer knowledge, hacklabs contribute in fighting the digital divide,
looking towards empowering those left-out by new technologies. While
officials might also pretend to do so when walking people around
supermarket Internet, others prefer to arm people with awareness on the
possibilities for governments to use the net to spy, identify and
repress.

Open-access spaces are providing social environments for free software
users and enthusiasts to meet, exchange and support each other, by
merging the tradition of Linux User Groups [34] and squat-cafés. As a
result, they act as bidirectional gateways, leading activists to make
the switch, and encouraging geek types to discover places they might not
have had the opportunity to enter otherwise...

> hackmeetings beyond computing: reality-hacking

While Plug'n'Politix was acting as an inspirational hub in northern
parts of Europe, bridges were being built in Italy to allow the
transport of hundreds of keyboards behind squatted doors. It began in
Firenze, in June 1998 [35], and was restarted each year since: hackers
gathering in squatted social centres, for three day festivals of digital
counter-culture, anticapitalist free-software, anti-authoritarian
skill-shares, peer-to-peer friendship and community building; without
sponsors, without entitled organisers; powered by volunteer work from
people across the country, coordinated through an open mailing-list and
contributing their skills; with a particular focus on meeting people &
being sociable; with a joyful general assembly to close the party.

Enthusiasm eventually jumped borders, and the concept quickly caught on
in Spain, where a similar movement emerged in 2000, when the first
hackmeeting took place in the Barcelona's "Les Naus" squatted social
centre [36]. Like in Italy, hackmeetings were to become a yearly event.
But the most successful aspect of these meetings, besides effectively
melting hacker culture and activist practice, was the creation of
hacklabs [37] all over the two countries, providing a permanent
continuation of the hackmeeting effort, following the idea of "reality
hacking". Reality hacking is about exporting the hacker attitude out of
the digital sphere it originated from. It is an invitation to embrace
life with the ingenious, critical and rebellious spirit emphasized by
hacker ethics. Iruña's hackmeeting [38] slogan was "hack your brain";
encouraging geeks to reclaim their intelligence, driving it away from
social norms and dominant culture influence, to use it as a subversive
tool against alienation & constraints.

The very social nature of southern hackmeetings and their successful mix
between technology and politics generated the will to further export the
tradition and disseminate its magic outdoors: a European-wide
Transnational Hackmeeting (THK) took place in June 2004 at the Monte
Paradiso hacklab from Pula, Croatia, in an effort to draw connexions
between eastern & western computed dissent [39]. A next encounter should
happen by the end of 2006...

> Squatting the Internet & spreading the word

Internet has brought a new dimension to social activism, allowing the
coordination of large scale actions that were never seen before. Spread
through the net, international calls to decentralised protests sometimes
led to hundreds of blockades, demonstrations and miscellaneous civil
disobedience actions being carried throughout the world with a common
goal, such as those which happened on November 30th, 1998, where
thousands blocked the World Trade Organisation in the streets of
Seattle. Thanks to an instant dissemination of information, it has been
possible to keep track, react, organise emergency solidarity, while the
intensification of communication between geographically distant groups
has undoubtedly generated emulation, fueled inspiration and facilitated
project creation.

Using the Internet as an activist medium requires infrastructures.
Before Internet was largely spread among the public, were already
running some servers dedicated to hosting webpages and e-mails for
groups who could not cope with advertisements, who would require
security, and favour trust based upon affinity with administrators to
feeding the dot-com phenomena. Tao.ca in Canada, kyuzz.org & ecn.org in
Italy, nodo50.org in Spain or flag.blackened.net in the US were some of
the first, soon to be followed by a number of others: squat.net &
nadir.org in Germany, sindominio.net in Spain, inventati.org &
autistici.org in Italy, riseup.net & mutualaid.org in the US...

Thanks to free software, it is possible to set up and administrate an
autonomous server over the Internet, without resorting to hosting
companies' commercial offers. While system administration is
traditionally carried by one person in businesses and institutions,
activist server admins have been working towards merging their politics
and computing passion, by experimenting with mechanisms of cooperative work.
Boum.org, for instance, implements a "collective administration"
framework that's been brewed by some french hacklabs for some years,
before being put into wider practice in running the server. In an effort
to facilitate the "learning by doing" approach and limit the extent of
informal hierarchies depending on knowledge between project members,
administration tasks are being divided in small clusters. A group of two
or more volunteers - one having prior knowledge on the issue, the other
willing to learn - takes care of each section for a certain period of
time, and then moves on to handle another cluster. Participants
eventually get to share a global view over a complex system, novices
being empowered by the process, whereas they're usually excluded.

Tech activists have often been prone to contribute modifications to free
software projects, some of them particularly reflecting their ethical &
practical concern, in regards to anonymity and privacy, related to
content-publishing, video editing or radio broadcasting. Riseup.net, for
example, distribute their server-enhancement developments as free
software [40]. Italian hackers issued Dynebolic [41], and the Metabolik
hacklab provided X-Evian [42], both being activist-oriented GNU/Linux
systems booting off a CD, allowing one to turn his/her computing into a
communication weapon in a few clicks. And sometime in 1999, Australian
group CAT (Community Activist Technology [43]) released a software
called Active [44], that would allow the quick spread of a well-known
activist information revolution: Indymedia!

> Indymedia: information, from the bottom to the top

Indymedia [45] was created as an activist answer to corporate
misinformation and outrageously biased media coverage of radical
protests. It was initiated in the midst of Seattle's tear gas in
November 1999, by a group of radical techies offering an original
contribution to the anti-WTO actions. It quickly grew into a world-wide
network for counter-information, providing an alternative to mainstream
media through a collection of decentralised websites. It is one of the
most inspiring examples of activist technology development putting
Internet to use. Similar to free-software in its open-participation
scheme, it has become a major medium, involving thousands.

Indymedia relies on open-publishing. Whereas traditional media divides
people into active journalists and passive consumers, Indymedia allows
anyone to instantly publish or comment on information. As a portal of
street activism, Indymedia attempts to counter official propaganda
and mediatic formatting by offering alternative views on the news, and
covering social struggles that are generally ignored. By taking its
decisions on consensus through transparent public mailing-lists,
Indymedia contrasts with the opacity and power-games that lie within the
official press. The whole network is based upon volunteer work, and
remains independent from institutions, corporations or political
parties. Being spread in a number of cities world-wide, it is able to
relay information from its source, allowing activists to avoid mediatic
filters and censorship. This decentralisation proved to be particularly
helpful in countries who seriously lack alternative media structures,
and were going through hectic political times, like Argentina or
Ecuador, whose Indymedia centers were donated hardware from the US,
collected by the Indymedia Solidarity project. Of course, Indymedia runs
free software on its servers. Like 80s MIT hackers used to say:
"information has to be free!".

Open-access and hacklabs provide physical gateways to Indymedia and
like-minded alternative news sites, by re-routing people's habits away
from cnn.com!

[This essay concludes below.]