Chromium as a tool of logistical power: A material political economy of open-source

IF 6.5 1区社会学 Q1 SOCIAL SCIENCES, INTERDISCIPLINARY

Big Data & Society Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI:10.1177/20539517231182399

Bolun Zhang, Davide Carpano

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Open-source software is used by almost all technology companies and has become an integral part of the technical infrastructure of digital capitalism. Generally, developers of open-source software have been viewed as a social movement at odds with the capitalist profit motive. This idealized view has been challenged as companies have made significant investments in open-source since the early 2000s. Current research frames corporate participation in open-source as fundamentally extractive in nature, failing to account for these sizable investments. Through a historical analysis of Google's Chromium browser project, we provide another way to understand corporate participation in open-source. This article takes a material political economic approach to argue that control of open-source projects can grant companies logistical power that enables them to influence standards and shape the Internet as an infrastructure for digital capitalism.

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铬作为物流力量的工具：开源的物质政治经济学

开源软件几乎被所有科技公司使用，并已成为数字资本主义技术基础设施的一个组成部分。一般来说，开源软件的开发者被视为一场与资本主义利润动机相悖的社会运动。自21世纪初以来，随着公司在开源方面进行了大量投资，这种理想化的观点受到了挑战。目前的研究将企业参与开源从根本上说是采掘性质的，没有考虑到这些可观的投资。通过对谷歌Chromium浏览器项目的历史分析，我们提供了另一种理解企业参与开源的方式。这篇文章采用了物质政治经济学的方法，认为对开源项目的控制可以赋予公司后勤力量，使他们能够影响标准，并将互联网塑造成数字资本主义的基础设施。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Big Data & Society SOCIAL SCIENCES, INTERDISCIPLINARY-

CiteScore

10.90

自引率

10.60%

发文量

审稿时长

11 weeks

期刊介绍： Big Data & Society (BD&S) is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes interdisciplinary work principally in the social sciences, humanities, and computing and their intersections with the arts and natural sciences. The journal focuses on the implications of Big Data for societies and aims to connect debates about Big Data practices and their effects on various sectors such as academia, social life, industry, business, and government. BD&S considers Big Data as an emerging field of practices, not solely defined by but generative of unique data qualities such as high volume, granularity, data linking, and mining. The journal pays attention to digital content generated both online and offline, encompassing social media, search engines, closed networks (e.g., commercial or government transactions), and open networks like digital archives, open government, and crowdsourced data. Rather than providing a fixed definition of Big Data, BD&S encourages interdisciplinary inquiries, debates, and studies on various topics and themes related to Big Data practices. BD&S seeks contributions that analyze Big Data practices, involve empirical engagements and experiments with innovative methods, and reflect on the consequences of these practices for the representation, realization, and governance of societies. As a digital-only journal, BD&S's platform can accommodate multimedia formats such as complex images, dynamic visualizations, videos, and audio content. The contents of the journal encompass peer-reviewed research articles, colloquia, bookcasts, think pieces, state-of-the-art methods, and work by early career researchers.