Rich Garnett at Mirror of Justice raises an interesting question about whether the Church should adopt the principles of the free software movement. Rick’s entry refers to an article suggesting that the ideals of the free software movement are consistent with Catholic social teaching regarding the dissemination of information, and that the Church should publish its electronic materials in non-proprietary formats.
Some of what this article is approaching is a Christian theory of intellectual property. There currently is no coherent Christian theory of intellectual property. Within my evangelical tradition, I think, intellectual property is thought of like personal property, but not because of any sustained reflection on what, if anything, makes intellectual property “property.” It is interesting to see a discussion of why the Church — whose mission is to spread the gospel and serve humanity — should consider open intellectual property standards.
A related issue is how open source principles relate to Christian concepts of property, the Church, the individual and the State. I’ve published on the open source software movement and the application of open source principles to biotechnology. (The “Pengiun” in the title of this post comes from my article, and from an earlier article by legal scholar Yochai Benkler; the ultimate reference is to the Linux Penguin). I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about how open source principles fit into a Christian understanding of the Church and the State
One of the key questions regarding a Christian theory of intellectual property, I think, is the extent to which intellectual property rights (IPRs) represent a moral right to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor or, instead, represent primarily a utilitarian bargain designed to incentive innovation. In the U.S., and under multilateral trade agreements such as TRIPS, IPRs are theoretically viewed as utlitarian, although the rhetoric of IP owners such as the music industry is increasingly couched in moral terms.
Free and open source software principles challeng this utilitarian framework by providing a living example of how innovation can thrive under more communal, cooperative norms. Free and open source norms also, however, challenge the Lockean moral rights view as applied to intellectual property, since “ownership” over the product and its components is ceded in many ways to the community rather than vesting in the individual.
This norm of communal ownership poses interesting questions for the Christian property theorist when placed in an Augustinian City of God / City of Man framework. In the Augustinian framework, the City of Man is corrupt and condemned, and yet God operates to keep some order in the City of Man, pending the final judgment, through secular government. There is no secular government in a free software / open source community. Instead, order is maintained through informal community norms, such as reciprocity and respect for the project’s founders. Does a move away from intellectual “property” and towards an open source norm, then, promise dissolution? Does the open source software movement threaten the legitimacy of the State? Why does the open source software community continue to thrive if unregulated human society naturally tends towards disorder?
I don’t have ready answers to these questions, but I intend to do some serious scholarly work on them in the near future.