8.6就开始翻译此文章,看得真让人头大,消化到现在也没有完全消化掉内部的从句。句子长到让人脑子爆炸
This is a book about property and how it underpins the social organization of cooperation and production in a digital era. I mean “property” in a broad sense—not only who owns what, but what it means to own something, what rights and responsibilities property confers, and where those ideas come from and how they spread. It is a story of how social organization can change the meaning of property, and conversely, how shifting notions of property can alter the possibilities of social organization.
I explain the creation of a particular kind of software—open source software—as an experiment in social organization around a distinctive notion of property. The conventional notion of property is, of course, the right to exclude you from using something that belongs to me. Property in open source is configured fundamentally around the right to distribute, not the right to exclude. If that sentence feels awkward on first reading, that is a testimony to just how deeply embedded in our intuitions and institutions the exclusion view of property really is.
Open source is an experiment in building a political economy—that is, a system of sustainable value creation and a set of governance mechanisms. In this case it is a governance system that holds together a community of producers around this counterintuitive notion of property rights as distribution. It is also a political economy that taps into a broad range of human motivations and relies on a creative and evolving set of organizational structures to coordinate behavior. What would a broader version of this political economy really look like? This book uses the open source story as a vehicle for proposing a set of preliminary answers to that very large question.
The way in is to answer two more immediate questions about open source. How is it that groups of computer programmers (sometimes very large groups) made up of individuals separated by geography, corporate boundaries, culture, language, and other characteristics, and connected mainly via telecommunications bandwidth, manage to work together over time and build complex, sophisticated software systems outside the boundaries of a corporate structure and for no direct monetary compensation? And why does the answer to that question matter to anyone who is not a computer programmer?
Let me restate these questions as an observation and two general propositions that together provoked me to write this book. The observation is that collaborative open source software projects such as Linux and Apache have demonstrated that a large and complex system of software code can be built, maintained, developed, and extended in a nonproprietary setting in which many developers work in a highly parallel, relatively unstructured way. The first proposition is that this is an important puzzle for social scientists worrying about problems of both small- and large-scale cooperation (which is just about every social scientist, in one way or another). It is also an important puzzle for any- one who struggles, in theory or in practice, with the limits to very complex divisions of labor and the management of knowledge in that setting.
The second proposition is that the open source software process is a real-world, researchable example of a community and a knowledge production process that has been fundamentally changed, or created in significant ways, by Internet technology. Understanding the open source process can generate new perspectives on very old and essential problems of social cooperation. And it can provide an early perspective on some of the institutional, political, and economic consequences for human societies of the telecommunications and Internet revolutions.
This book explains how the open source software process works. It is broadly a book about technology and society, in the sense that changes in technology uncover hidden assumptions of inevitability in production systems and the social arrangements that accompany them. It is also about computers and software, because the success of open source rests ultimately on computer code, code that people often find more functional, reliable, and faster to evolve than most proprietary software built inside a conventional corporate organization. It is a business and legal story as well. Open source code does not obliterate profit, capitalism, or intellectual property rights. Companies and individuals are creating intellectual products and making money from open source software code, while inventing new business models and notions about property along the way.
Ultimately the success of open source is a political story. The open source software process is not a chaotic free-for-all in which everyone has equal power and influence. And it is certainly not an idyllic community of like-minded friends in which consensus reigns and agreement is easy. In fact, conflict is not unusual in this community; it’s endemic and inherent to the open source process. The management of conflict is politics and indeed there is a political organization at work here, with the standard accoutrements of power, interests, rules, behavioral norms, decision-making procedures, and sanctioning mechanisms. But it is not a political organization that looks familiar to the logic of an industrial-era political economy.
软件的产权与问题
这个是一本在数字时代的关于产权及产权如何支撑社会组织的产品及合作的书。我所说的“产权”是广义上的——不仅仅是谁拥有什么,还包含拥有它的一些意义,产权所包含的权力及责任,还有这些主意的来源及他们的传播。这是一个关于社会组织是如何能够反转地改变产权的意义,如何产权的观念观念能使社会组织改变的可能性的故事。
我解释一种特定的软件产物——开源软件——是一个社会组织关于一种与众不同的产权观念的实验。当然,产权传统的观念是排除你使用某个属于我的东西的权利。产权在开源领域是从根本上围绕分配分发的权利而不是排除权。如果第一次读那些句子感到别扭,那就证明对于产权观的排斥是多么深入的嵌入我们的直觉和制度中。
开源是一个建立在政治经济上的经验,那是一种可持续的价值产物的系统和一系列治理机制。在这种情况下它是一个治理系统,将社区中的开发者主持在一起围绕这个违反常理的产权观念,就是分配。它也是一种广泛挖掘人类动机并且依赖一系列的创造性与进化的组织结构来协调行为的政治经济。这种广义的政治经济到底是什么样子?这本书使用开源估时作为媒介来简单的回答这个宽泛的问题。
方法是回答两个开源的更直接的问题。那些电脑开发群体(有时是非常大的群体)他们是如何在地域、公司边界、文化、语言、和其他性格在个体分离的情况下形成的,并且主要通过带宽联系,设法随着时间推移一起工作,并且在公司框架的边界以外建并且没有直接经济补偿的情况下立起复杂的尖端的软件体系?并且为什么回答那个问题对每一个非程序开发者来说很重要?
让我重申这些作为一个观察的和两个大众命题的问题的集合刺激我写这本书的。观察的是协作的开源软件项目比如Linux和Apache展示了大型的复杂软件系统的代码在以一个非专有的情况,许多开发者以高度平行、相对非结构化方式的情况下,还可以编译、维护、开发、扩展。第一主张是一个重要的问题,对于社会科学家来说担心的问题是无论小规模还是大规模合作(就是每个社会学家,以这种或那种方式)。它也是对于那些在理论上或者实践上挣扎那些非常复杂的劳工分类和在那种情况下的管理知识是非常重要的。
第二主张是开源软件流程是一个真实世界,可触及的社区示例和一个已经被从根本上改变的、或者以重要方式产生的、通过互联网技术产生的创建知识生产流程。了解开源的流程可以在基本的以前的社会合作的问题上产生新的观点。并且它可以为通信和网络进步的人类社会,提供一些在制度化的政治的和经济结果上的早期观点。
这本书阐述了开源软件的进程是如何工作的。这是一本广泛的包含技术和社会学的书,在这个意义上作出技术的改变,发掘在生产系统中和伴随他们的社会安排中隐藏的必然假设。这也事关电脑和软件,因为开源的成功最终取决于电脑代码,人们也常常在发现,比在传统企业建立的软件所有权,代码更可用的,可依赖的并且快速净化。这也是一个商业和合法的故事。开源代码并不抹杀利益、资本主义、或者智慧产权。公司或者个人创造智慧产品并且从开源软件中赚钱,同时发明新的商业模式和产权的观点。
最终开源的成功时一个政治故事。开源软件的进程并不是混沌的乱战,在这里每个人都有同样的权利和影响。并且它当然并不是一个田园诗般的志同道合的朋友轻松的达成统治性的共识与协约的社区。事实上,在这个社区冲突并不是不常见;它的地方性和固有性推动开源的进程。管理的冲突是政治性的并且这里确实有政治组织工作者,用标准权力、兴趣、规则、举止规范、决定程序、制裁机制的装备。但是这并不是一个政治组织,它看起来像工业时代的政治经济的逻辑。
underpins 支撑
cooperation 合作 协作
digital era 数码时代
in a broad sense 广义上
conversely 反过来
shifting 换挡 转移
notions 观念
possibilities 可能性
alter 改变
experiment 实验
distinctive 与众不同
conventional 传统的 常规 惯例 俗套
fundamentally 从根本上
exclude 排除 排斥 拒绝
awkward 尴尬 别扭 笨拙 不得劲
testimony 见证 证明 证词 证据
embedded 嵌入式的
intuitions 直觉 直视
institutions 制度
exclusion 排斥
political 政治
sustainable 可持续的
governance 治理
mechanisms 机制
counterintuitive 违反直觉的
distribution 分配 布局
relies 依赖 依仗
motivations 动机 意志
preliminary 初步
immediate 直接的 立即的
geography 地理
boundaries 界限
corporate boundaries 公司边界
bandwidth 带宽
sophisticated 复杂的 尖端的
restate 重申
propositions 命题
provoked 挑衅 刺激
observation 观察 注目
collaborative 协作的
maintained 维护
parallel 平行线
unstructured way 非结构化方式
proposition 主张
large-scale 大规模
significant 重要的 重大
rests ultimately on 最终取决于
essential 基本的
perspectives 观点
institutional 机构的 制度化的
consequences 结果
broadly 广泛的
in the sense 在这个意义上
uncover 揭露 发掘
assumptions 假设
inevitability 必然性
arrangements 安排
accompany 陪伴 伴随
proprietary 所有权
corporate 公司的
obliterate 泯 废止 抹杀
intellectual 读书分子 知识性的
inventing 发明
chaotic 混乱的
free-for-all 混战
idyllic田园诗般的
consensus 共识
reigns 统治
like-minded 志同道合
endemic地方病
decision-making 做决定
norms 规范
accoutrements 装备
sanctioning mechanisms 制裁机制
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