The Linux Foundation has released a document called "How to Participate in the Linux Community". This gives a detailed picture of the practicalities of radically distributed development, its scale and the methods which evolved to handle that. See also this article on ZDNet.

1.2: WHAT THIS DOCUMENT IS ABOUT

The Linux kernel, at over 6 million lines of code and well over 1000 active contributors, is one of the largest and most active free software projects in existence. Since its humble beginning in 1991, this kernel has evolved into a best-of-breed operating system component which runs on pocket-sized digital music players, desktop PCs, the largest supercomputers in existence, and all types of systems in between. It is a robust, efficient, and scalable solution for almost any situation.

With the growth of Linux has come an increase in the number of developers (and companies) wishing to participate in its development. Hardware vendors want to ensure that Linux supports their products well, making those products attractive to Linux users. Embedded systems vendors, who use Linux as a component in an integrated product, want Linux to be as capable and well-suited to the task at hand as possible. Distributors and other software vendors who base their products on Linux have a clear interest in the capabilities, performance, and reliability of the Linux kernel. And end users, too, will often wish to change Linux to make it better suit their needs.

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This quotation (in many variants) is so ubiquitous as it is meaningless, but it is still interesting to find its source: Saul Bellow, The Distracted Public, 1990

Ars Technica writes about a recent federal appeals court ruling:

Here is my review of Clay Shirky's new book, which was originally published on the great metamute site.

Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody is reputed to be the best book ever written on Web 2.0. By why the strange silence on questions of copyright, privacy and ownership? Felix Stalder delves beneath the slick prose and upbeat message.

‘Communication tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.’ If a single sentence can represent the entire book, it must be this one. For one, it's great writing. Precise, condensed, clear. Shirky's book is full of it. It shifts attention to the right level, away from the tools and to what people do with them. It also contains the dilemma that the entire book grapples with: how to write about technology once that technology has become mundane? Lastly, it leaves a lot of things out. How do technologies become mundane? Which ones are legitimate and which ones are not? Why are some providers of ‘boring technologies’ worth billions (e.g. YouTube) while others subject to high-pressure litigation (e.g. ThePirateBay)? But Shirky doesn't want to go there, he prefers to keep the message safe and positive.

Referring to his unauthorized use of material for his major "Histoire(s) du cinema" Jean Luc Godard said in an interview in 1996:

Amit Singhal, Google Fellow has written a series of "official" posts explaing how google creates its ranking system. It's light on details, but gives an impression of the enormeous complexity of search engines.

Hadn't know this journal before.Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology
From the most recent issue:

CLIVE LAWSON An Ontology of Technology: Artefacts, Relations and Functions

This is an older text, from 2005, but it's still one of the best on the issue of the paradoxical relationship between the attempts to privatize knowledge and its inherent tendency to be social, because it's based on a shared language.

The gentrye are all round, on each side they are found,
Theire wisdom’s so profound, to cheat us of our ground
Stand up now, Diggers all.
The Diggers’ Song, Gerrard Winstanley & Leon Rosselson

First Monday published my paper in its current edition. Below is the abstract, the full text is here