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

Aug. 29 - An Introduction to Open Source

• Tim O'Reilly, Open Source Paradigm Shift, available at: http://tim.oreilly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html
• Yochai Benkler, Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm, 112 Yale Law Journal (2002-03) (please read section I) available at: http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html

Sept. 12 - Open Source Software in Practice

Guest Lecturer: Brian Behlendorf (CollabNet)

• Richard Stallman, GNU Manifesto, available at: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
• Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, available at: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/

Sept. 19 - Economics of Open Source

• Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole, "The Simple Economics of Open Source", Journal of Industrial Economics, 50, 197-234 (2002) available at: http://www.people.hbs.edu/jlerner/simple.pdf
• Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, "Cooking Pot Markets: An Economic Model for the Trade in Free Goods and Services over the Internet", First Monday 3, 1998, at: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/ghosh/

Sept. 26 - Open Source Business Models (Part I)

Guest Lecturer: Dan McGrath (IBM)

• Frederick P. Brooks Jr, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering Chapters 2 -7.
• The "Halloween Document" (Internal Microsoft Memo by Vinod Vallopillil, 1998) interestingly annotated by Eric Raymond at: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.php
• John Koenig, "Seven open source business strategies for competitive advantage", (14-May-2004), available at: http://management.itmanagersjournal.com/print.pl?sid=04/05/10/2052216

Oct. 3 - Open Source Business Models (Part II)

• Robert Young and Wendy Goldman Rohm, Under the Radar: How Red Hat Changed the Software Business and Took Microsoft by Surprise Chapters 4 and 5.
• Chris Rasch, "The Wall Street Performer Protocol: Using Software Completion Bonds to Fund Open Source Software Development," First Monday 6 (2001), at: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_6/rasch/index.html

Oct. 10 - Roles of Open Source & Proprietary Software in the Private Sector

Pam's Lecture Slides: PDF (92KB)

• Eben Moglen, Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright, in THE COMMODIFICATION OF INFORMATION 107 (Niva Elkin-Koren & Neil Weinstock Netanel, eds. 2002), available at: http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism.html
• Speech by Craig Mundie, Microsoft Senior Vice President, at NYU Stern School of Business, 3 May 2001, at: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.mspx
• David Lancashire, "Code, Culture, and Cash: The Fading Altruism of Open Source Development," First Monday 6 (2001), at: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_12/lancashire/index.html

Oct. 17 - Government Policy About Open Source

Steves's Lecture Slides: PDF (913KB)

Pam's Lecture Slides: PDF (70KB)

• David S. Evans, Politics And Programming: Government Preferences for Promoting Open Source Software; Chapter 3 in Government Policy Towards Open Source Software, Robert Hahn ed., 2002. at: http://www.aei.brookings.org/admin/authorpdfs/page.php?id=213
• Rishab Aiyer Ghosh et. al, "Free/Libre Software and Open Source Software, Survey and Study," 2002 Part 2 B (EU Policy), at: http://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/report/FLOSSFinal_2b.pdf

Oct. 24 - Regulability of Open Source/Open Source as a Global Phenomenon

• Lawrence Lessig, The Limits in Open Code: Regulatory Standards & the Future of the Net, 14 Berk. Tech. L. J. 759 (1999), available at: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/articles/vol14/Lessig/html/text.html
• Stephen M. McJohn, The Paradoxes of Free Software, 9 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 25 (2000)

Oct. 31 - Conceptual Underpinnings of Free and Open Source Licenses: Property, Contract, or Something Else?

Guest Lecturer: Margaret Radin (Stanford Law School)

• Michael Madison, Reconstructing the Software License, 35 Loy.-Chi. L.J. 275 (2003) available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=502102

Recommended:

• Glen O. Robinson, Personal Property Servitudes, 71 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1449 (2004) available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=477541

Nov. 7 - Enforceability of Open Source Licenses

Guest Lecturer: Molly van Houweling (UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law)

Guest Lecturer: Brian Carver (UC Berkeley, 3rd-Year Student at Boalt Hall School of Law)

Brian's Lecture Slides: PDF (82KB)

• GNU General Public License (GPL), available at: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
• Parts II, III-B, & III-C of David McGowan, Legal Implications of Open Source Software, 2001 U. Ill. L. Rev. 241 (2001), available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=243237

Nov. 14 - Adapting the Open Source Concept to Biotech Innovations

Guest Lecturer: Steve Maurer (UC Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy)

Maurer's Lecture Slides: PDF (158KB)

• Sara Boettiger & Dan L. Burk, Open Source Patenting, 1 J. Biotech. L. 221 (2004), available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=645182
• Arti Rai, Open and Collaborative Research: A New Model for Biomedicine, in INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN FRONTIER INDUSTRIES 131 (Robert W. Hahn ed., AEI-Brookings Press 2005), available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=574863

Recommended:

• Stephen M. Maurer, Arti Rai, Andrej Sali, Finding Cures for Tropical Diseases: Is Open Source an Answer?, PLoS Med 1(3): e56. (2004) available at: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/archive/1549-1676/1/3/pdf/10.1371_journal.pmed.0010056-L.pdf

Nov. 21 - Adapting the Open Source Concept to Other Digital Content: Creative Commons and Public Library of Science

Guest Lecturer: Michael Eisen (PLOS)

Pam's Lecture Slides: PDF (71KB)

Michael Eisen's Lecture Slides: PDF (292KB)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Community
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Power_structure
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_issues

Nov. 28 - Adapting the Open Source Concept to Other Content: Reports on Other Experiments

Dec. 5 - Adapting the Open Source Concept to Principles of Democratic Governance

Guest Lecturer: Beth Noveck (New York Law School)

• Charles Sabel, Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry Chapter 1.
• Steven Weber, "What if Open Source Principles of Governance Find Their Way into Communities of Knowledge and Practice in Politics?", forthcoming in Open Sources II.