[Air-l] Do volunteers run the internet?

Chris Modzelewski chris.modzelewski at imetria.com
Thu Jun 28 18:30:36 PDT 2007


Peter,

If you are looking for any literature on governance, "volunteerism" and 
motivation in the open source or "free" software movement, I would 
suggest the following collections/papers:

1. Cusumano et al, Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software,
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262562278.pdf

2. Karin Lakhani, Robert Wolf, Why Hackers Do What They Do: 
Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software 
Projects, http://freesoftware.mit.edu/papers/lakhaniwolf.pdf

They - combined with Karl Fogel's book "Producing Open Source Software" 
- provide an excellent introduction into governance and coordination in 
the open source software movement. They range from the theoretical, to 
the more nitty-gritty practical, but they provide many interesting 
perspectives and much insight.

The papers/books I mention above are SPECIFICALLY geared towards the 
open-source software arena, which is NOT the same as the social 
networking or web 2.0 trend (social networking, wiki's, etc.).

All the best,
Chris Modzelewski
Emerging Analysis Corporation / ChartSearch Corporation

Peter Timusk wrote:
> I am talking about volunteers running the internet.
> 
> 1. a fair amount of content is provided for no money like blogs that  
> don't make money
> 
> 2. open source software
> 
> 3. voluntary organisations like FreeNets.
> 
> 4. more in the future
> 
> Peter Timusk,
> B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University
> Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa (2006-2007).
> just trying to stay linear.
> Read by hundreds of lurkers every week.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 27-Jun-07, at 5:49 PM, elw at stderr.org wrote:
> 
>>
>>> Has anyone researched internet governance as voluntary?
>>>
>>> I have one undergrad paper on this. I think I am original on this but
>>> would appreciate any findings by others.
>>>
>>> also are there any statistics on this?
>> you've got two different topics here, imho - one in the subject,  
>> one in
>> the body.
>>
>> are you talking about volunteers RUNNING the internet, or the  
>> premise that
>> internet networks submit voluntarily to governance by ICANN et al?
>>
>> both tracks of ideas have some support, but are quite different  
>> topics...
>>
>> --e
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