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What is the basis of Free software and Open Hardware movement?
It is all about starting to Think Like a Commoner and in-fact becoming a commoner by enriching, strengthening and protecting the Commons. In case of this movement, it is very specific to Digital Commons.
Beyond commons, the movement should also focus on Digital Literacy in order to achieve the following,
- bridge the gap of Digital Divide.
- educate computer, smartphone and Internet users about their Right to Privacy.
- demand for transparent, publicly available glass-box systems and algorithms instead of non-transparent, closed black-box systems and algorithms in governing our municipals, cities, districts, state and nation. Eg: The source code and hardware designs of Electronic Voting Machine can be made transparent and public. Using transparent and participatory systems like DeciDim, etc.,
The above objectives cannot be achieve without commons, therefore commons is the basis of this movement.
What are Commons
No matter how much simple definition I can give, it will not be equivalent of reading and understanding yourself more about Commons from the book Think Like a Commoner from the author David Bollier.
The word and the idea of commons is not new to us. In fact, in Tamil language we have a word called Purambokku Nilam (புறம்போக்கு நிலம்). This word is very specific to land ownership and control. But the idea of commons can be extended to other domains as well. For example, today we have Creative Commons and in general extending the idea of Commons to electronics, software, data, etc., are called Digital Commons.
Example: Wikipedia, GNU/Linux, OpenStreetMap etc. are all part of digital commons.