Policy Statement for COM580: Open Source in Technical Communication

Required Texts

• Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Open Source and Linux by an Accidental Revolutionary, Revised & Expanded Edition. O'Reilly Media, 2001. (online, bookstore)
• Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks. Yale University Press, 2007. (online, bookstore)
• Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. Penguin, 2005. (online, bookstore)
• Florida, Richard. Rise of the Creative Class. Basic Books, 2003. (bookstore)
• Additional Articles Linked from Calendar

Course Description

This special topics seminar investigates the nature of open source, and its role in various professions, including technical communication. We will look at open source's emergence on the Internet and within software communities and trace its broader impact on and implications for traditional business and cultural models of production, and the lives of individuals. We will also examine how the law--particularly copyright law and licensing schemes--impacts software, intellectual property, and creative activity. The course concludes by considering how principles of open source participate and operate in a "creative class" of individuals (which class includes software developers, technical communicators, and others).

Additionally, we will look at open source as both an attitude toward intellectual property and a corresponding model of production, development, and peer review. Both the attitude and the model have significant implications for distributions of labor and power across governments, businesses, and academic institutions. To consider this attitude, however, we will need to broaden our conception of open source to both include and extend beyond software, and look at areas like academic research and publishing (including open-access journals), corporate research and development (R&D), and the production of cultural artifacts (painting, photography, even YouTube videos). We will also investigate copyright alternatives offered through different software and intellectual property licenses (GPL, LGPL, GNU Free Documentation, FreeBSD, Creative Commons and others), and how these alternatives impact the creative output and livelihoods of visual artists, musicians, researchers, software developers, and technical communicators: the creative class.

Course Goals

• Develop a complex and nuanced understanding of the issues that fall under the umbrella of "open source"
• Explore the role of ethics in open source technologies and approaches to sharing cultural objects/artifacts (including artifacts from technical communication)
• Understand the range of intellectual, business, and legal issues surrounding open source
• Consider the role of open source within an "information economy"
• Become aware of, monitor, and perhaps participate in an open-source-like project close to your own professional or academic interests
• Use the course projects to deepen your understanding of the other course goals

Course Projects

• See list at the Course Projects page, which includes descriptions of ongoing and major projects.

Grading

• State-of-the-Art Project: 15 pts
• Tracking an Open Source Community: 15pts
• Final Project: 20pts
• Participation: 50pts
• Total: 100pts

Grading Scale

A - Student has turned in all required components of a project, the work is exceptional in quality, and reflects the student's dedication to adjusting the project to his or her own interests.
B - Student has turned in all required components of a project and submitted work that is acceptable as graduate-level.
C - Student has turned in all required components of a project, but the work is below graduate-level.
F - Student has not turned in all required components of a project.

Attendance and Participation

Your attendance and active participation are required both for your success in the class, and for the success of the class as a whole. However, if you absolutely must miss, please contact me ahead of time via phone or email.

Academic Honesty

As with any course at IIT, you are expected to uphold the Code of Academic Honesty (pp. 26-27 of the IIT Graduate Student Handbook). In short, all work should be your own, including design and computer code. Summarizations, quotations, the use of open source code libraries, and any images not of your own making should be clearly cited as legally and ethically warranted and rhetorically appropriate.

Special Needs Statement

Students who have any difficulty (either permanent or temporary) that might affect their ability to perform in class should contact me privately, either in person or via email, at the start of the semester. Methods, materials, or deadlines will be adapted as required to ensure equitable participation.



Author:

Karl Stolley