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Accepted Paper:

Free Software and a vitality of circulation  
Gregers Petersen (Copenhagen Business School)

Paper short abstract:

Free software is in constant circulation and this raises questions about value, exchange and relations.

Paper long abstract:

Free software and a vitality of circulation.

When you encounter a free software project certain things can make one wonder. There is the fundamental aspect of turning copyright upside-down, through the reproduction of the copyleft license. There is a whole other, and not less puzzling, question: Why are people placing so much of their life, time and work in a free software project? In these days and times it seems more logical to expect that individuals would invest their valuable skills in much more market oriented activities, e.g. selling ones craft to the highest bidder. Instead the work is placed under a license which proscribes free access, rights to use and change and enforces constant re-distribution. It is all very odd.

This paper will explore different kinds of acts of owning, based on 'giving-while-keeping'. The setting is located within a free software project and the subject is the projects particular kind of cultural expression which goes against a conflation into commodities. This is a dividual world - the merging and emerging of relations - and this makes one wonder, what it is which is given and what is kept? Free software is in constant circulation, it stands out with a robust vitality and efficiently fends against appropriation. This vitality of circulation pushes different aspects of value and hereby social relations and persons are transformed.

Panel P33
Performance and vitality: circulation and the value of culture
  Session 1