Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Exploitation of the self in community-based software production: Workers' freedoms or firm foundations?

2009; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/030981680909700106

2041-0980

Phoebe Moore, P. A. M. Taylor,

Digital Economy and Work Transformation

Free and open-source software (FOSS) communities constitute an arena in which thousands of users voluntarily explore design codes, spot bugs in codes, and make contributions to the code in a fashion at odds with the otherwise hugely competitive software market. This computerisation movement emerged as a challenge to the domination of such behemoth firms as Microsoft and IBM, and is portrayed as having a revolutionary ultimate goal: ‘to provide free software to do all of the jobs computer users want to do’ (Free Software Foundation, 2008). We ask to what extent FOSS actually challenges the orthodoxy: does ego-less programming of the information bazaar really free participants from the stuffy pews of the cathedral, and challenge the essence of capitalism?