Open Source Development and Distribution of Digital Information:
Economic, Legal, and Social Perspectives

INFOSYS 296A-2 | University of California at Berkeley | Fall 2005

Mitch Kapor

Image of Mitch Kapor Mitchell Kapor is the founder and Chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF), a non-profit organization working to create and gain wide adoption for software applications of uncompromising quality using open-source methods. OSAF is designing a new application called "Chandler" to manage email, appointments, contacts, and tasks, and easily allow information to be shared with friends, family, and colleagues. Chandler will be free of charge and will run on the Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms. Kapor has worn many hats over the past 25 years: software designer, entrepreneur, and social activist, among them. He founded Lotus Development Corporation in 1982 and designed Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer app," which made the PC ubiquitous in business. He is the co-founder and former Chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization working in the public interest to protect privacy and free expression on the Internet.

Mr. Kapor's website: http://www.kapor.com/

Pam Samuelson

Image of Pam Samuelson Pamela Samuelson is a Chancellor's Professor of Information Management and of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and an advisor to the Samuelson High Technology Law & Public Policy Clinic at Boalt Hall. She teaches courses on intellectual property, cyberlaw, and information policy. Samuelson has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new information technologies pose for traditional legal regimes, especially for intellectual property law. She is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a contributing editor of Communications of the ACM, a past fellow of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and an honorary professor of the University of Amsterdam. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Open Source Application Foundation, as well as a member of the Advisory Board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

A 1971 graduate of the University of Hawaii and a 1976 graduate of Yale Law School, Samuelson practiced law as a litigation associate with the New York law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher before turning to academic pursuits. From 1981 through June 1996 she was a member of the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, from which she visited at Columbia, Cornell, and Emory Law Schools. She has been a member of the Berkeley faculty since 1996.

Prof. Samuelson's website: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~pam/.

Steven Weber

Image of Steven Weber Steven Weber is Director of the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley. Weber, a specialist in International Relations, is Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, an associate with the International Computer Science Institute, and affiliated faculty of the Energy and Resources Group. His areas of special interest include international and national security; the impact of technology on national systems of innovation, defense, and deterrence; and the political economy of knowledge-intensive industries particularly software and pharmaceuticals.

Trained in history and international development at Washington University, and medicine and political science at Stanford, Weber joined the Berkeley faculty in 1989. In 1992 he served as special consultant to the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. He has held academic fellowships with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a member of the Global Business Network in Emeryville, California, and actively consults with government agencies, private multinational firms, and international non-governmental issues on foreign policy issues, risk analysis, strategy, and forecasting.

Weber's major publications include Cooperation and Discord in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control (Princeton University Press); the edited book Globalization and the European Political Economy (Columbia University Press); and numerous articles and chapters in the areas of U.S. foreign policy, the political economy of trade and finance, politics of the post-Cold War world, and European integration. His newest book, The Success of Open Source, was published in April 2004 by Harvard University Press.

For more information on Steven Weber, see the Conversations with History interview (2003), "Power in the Information Age", his website: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/faculty/Weber.html or his Politics and Economics Blog.

Joseph Lorenzo Hall (GSI)

Image of Joseph Hall Joseph Lorenzo Hall is a Phd student at UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems. He holds a merged Bachelor of Science in physics and astronomy from Northern Arizona University and two Masters degrees from UC Berkeley; one in astrophysics and one in information management and systems. Joe's research involves qualitative and quantitative work surrounding intellectual property in the areas of technical protection of digital content, peer-to-peer technologies and digital government. His Phd work, using the rise of computerized voting systems as a case study, concerns mechanisms that ensure essential features of democracy are translated into the digital sphere as core functions of government become computerized, networked and untethered.