Not Just Open / Source

During the Session 2 lecture, there was a lot of discussion of ownership and authorship. Where does ownership lie, when authorship is disputed due to collaborative efforts? When it comes to open code and source, there are so many contributions made and authorship belongs to no singular person, thus ownership belongs to no particular. This allows for growth and collective development among a community.

Lawrence Liang lectured on the Alternative Law Forum, which deals with a lot of things, one focus being on intellectual property. For example, they oppose the Indian Copyright act, because it could hinder creative innovation.

Open source allows collaborative efforts to one work that could positively affect a group. The old saying, "Two heads are better than one", has yet to be inaccurate, even in this sense. Collaborative efforts bring communities closer, possibly the global into a local realm and bring about a overall growth within the community. The internet makes these things very possible; fostering a community where information is accessible, but also allows redistribution of said information.

Although such communities and information can be manipulated by larger corporations. Considering the issue of authorship and ownership that is always brought into question, due to the vast amount of collaboration it is easy for larger outside power to manipulate accordingly. Once an idea can be seen as profitable, it would become easy for a larger company to claim such an idea, if ownership cannot be assigned.

I'm not entirely sure where I was going with this... but open source sounds great for cultural development, but a risk for those involved to be manipulated by an outside force.