Science Studies 2/2007 Retiring the Network Spokesman: The Poly-Vocality of Free Software Networks in Peru

National legislation to mandate the use or consideration of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in government institutions is increasingly emerging as a strategy for FLOSS advocates in Latin America and the broader developing world. Such movements for the political use and regulation of FLOS...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Anita Say Chan
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.145.3902
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/Chan_ScienceStudies.pdf
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Summary:National legislation to mandate the use or consideration of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in government institutions is increasingly emerging as a strategy for FLOSS advocates in Latin America and the broader developing world. Such movements for the political use and regulation of FLOSS mark a distinct turn in the objectives and work of FLOSS advocates, whose activities largely focused on the dissemination of FLOSS as a technological artifact. This paper investigates the network of diverse actors involved in promoting FLOSS legislation in Peru, one of the first nations where a movement for FLOSS legislation emerged. It emphasizes that crucial to the work of FLOSS ’ network actors is not their merely technological productivity, but their cultural and political productivity – that is, their ability to produce diverse body of meaning made both evident and mobile in narratives of FLOSS use and adoption.