Free and Feminist

1 minute read

Free and Feminist

Open Source Free Software Sustainability

How do small independent free software projects sustain themselves over many years? Starting with the example of UpStage, a 15-year-old artist-led cyberformance platform, we discussed funding, community and development. We talked about the importance of documentation and resource sharing – not reinventing the wheel – and what people need or get out of contributing to projects. We also discussed the need to plan for the end of a project, rather than having a lot of software “corpses” hanging around on repositories.

We didn’t try to come up with answers, but we shared a lot of experiences and ideas, and the range of perspectives was very rich.

From a Brief Feminist History of Linux to Imagining a Feminist Internet

In the beautiful yellow school room at XM24, where language classes are held not for, but WITH migrant people, after lunch at Eclectic Tech Carnival 2018 we gathered to take a closer look at the history of Linux from a personal, feminist perspective.

Looking at the corporate, commercial interests now heavily invested in the development of this free and open source operating system, we critically discussed the “heroic geek” narrative of the history of Linux and the myth of meritocracy. From there we moved to a discussion of whether we might need or want a feminist distribution of Linux. We do. Even further, we want to imagine a feminist Internet.

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