Still another idea in Enlish

Professional resistance, infrastructure and self-exploitation

Like typographers in the 19th century, computer scientists play an important role in both the resistance and the diffusion of knowledge in the 20th century. Indeed, an individual and collective awareness leads to the emergence of political initiatives among computer scientists. In order to understand the meaning of these political initiatives, it is necessary to present the waves of resistance present in the computer world. Then, the aspects of the infrastructure collectives in technologies will be presented, ending with research questions.

History of a certain IT resistance

A first critical step was taken with the emergence of Free Software and the GNU Manifesto in 1985[1], which encouraged people to resist the commercialization of software. This commercialization occurs through the appropriation of the code produced by programmers by companies. To understand this possibility of appropriation, we must digress on the nature of code and software. Indeed, software could be commercialized because of a particular technicality, the fact that the language that a computer can understand is not quickly comprehensible to most human beings. To facilitate the development of software, since the 80s, it has been necessary to create programming languages, with which are associated compilers, software that allows to convert a language relatively simple to understand for a programmer into a series of instructions understandable by the machine. Thus, most of the code produced needs to be compiled to become software that can perform operations for a computer. This compilation is a process that is very difficult to reverse, since it erases the meaning given to the operations by the programmers. Thus, with the commercialization of software through proprietary software, the code produced in a programming language by programmers remains the property of the companies, which only sell the right to use the compiled software. This makes it impossible to know how the proprietary software works, and what it does. This is why Free Software proposes to produce software that is distributed with licenses that include at least four freedoms: the freedom to use the software, the freedom to study the code used to generate the software and adapt it to our needs, the freedom to distribute the software, and the freedom to distribute the code with improvements [2]. Although the political results of the Free Software movement will be questioned here, the fact remains that Free Software plays important roles in the software ecology of the world [3] and that most people use some Free Software, whether it is Android phones [4], the Darwin operating system used by Apple [5] or through Wordpress sites, which represent almost 40% of all websites [6].

Thus, many progressive computer scientists will fight for Free Software, some even comparing commercial software to enclosures [7]. 7] Another frequently used comparison is the ability to repair the engine of one's car, which subsequently leads to the right to repair. These metaphors were more credible at a time when computers were mainly used by a minority of computer literate people. Now, on the contrary, the majority of machines using software are not the computers or telephones you have in front of you. In the case of Internet use, for example, it is estimated that in 2017 the computers that receive the contents spend 34% of the electricity needed for information technology, while the data centers, the production of the devices and the networks represent 66% [8]. The power consumption obviously does not represent very well the number of machines or software, but it is clear that the software needed to run this infrastructure is non-negligible. It is also possible to think of the computers that run industries, ATMs, computers in cars or the software that keeps health data and it becomes obvious that the liberation of software benefits both users, but above all companies and among them the richest in the world [9][10]. In a way, Free Software has succeeded commercially by failing in its subversive mission.

However, free software was only a first step for progressive computer scientists. One of the important effects of free software that will be realized with the emergence of the Internet is the possibility to offer communication services. The most telling example is altern.org, a server set up by Valentin Lacambre, which aimed to offer free and ad-free web hosting, based among other things on free software. [11] The goal of the operation was to promote freedom of expression and to attack companies that tried to make a profit on hosting. After numerous lawsuits [12] altern.org was unfortunately closed. However, the software used for hosting was shared with other hosts, which eventually became AlternC, a free software used by several left-wing hosts [13]. In the same vein as altern.org in Canada, tao.ca, a provider of email and mailing lists, and following them, resist.ca, réseau Koumbit and riseup.net, collectives also providing lists, web hosting and email. In short, a second movement of reappropriation of communication infrastructures, which began in the early 90s, used the tools produced by the free software movement to try to regain control of progressive content distribution infrastructures.

But already in the late 1990s the line between hosting and broadcasting began to blur. For the WTO summit held in late November 1999 in Seattle, a virtual alternative media center was set up, since activists expected the mainstream media to ignore or give biased coverage to the protests [14]. To this end, Indymedia allowed users to publish in near real time on the site, making the perspectives of protest participants visible [15]. This strategy quickly spread, given the free software used, which was then used by activists organizing against the Summit of the Americas that took place later in 2001 in Quebec City [16]. In short, in addition to attacking software control and infrastructure management, progressive computer scientists and their allies also paved the way for participatory information media, long before the advent of Facebook. The term web 2.0 summarizes the ideas that emerged from this encouragement of open publishing, which led to a host of non-profit organizations offering public services, such as Wikipedia.

Infrastructure computing collectives

The goal here is to trace a history of progressive computer technology organizations in these different movements in Canada and the United States. Since the main object is the work of computer scientists, the functioning of independent information centers will only have a secondary role[17], since they generally consist in a link between journalistic and editorial work and technical work[18]. The history of the groups involved in the communication infrastructure of these different movements has therefore been passed through several main groups: tao.ca, resist.ca, riseup.net and the Koumbit network. The goal being to bring out the spirit of a particular historical period, these three collectives will be studied between 1996 and 2010. The idea here is to cover a wave of protest against capitalism, which is generally considered to begin with the Zapatista uprising in 1994 (Fortin, 2005), but whose end is quite uncertain. Although the "alterglobalist" movement is clinically dead, debates about its existence seem to have rather ceased and there is no consensus on when it will end. Still, it is possible to see the G20 summit in Toronto as a last gasp that might be worth taking into account. Another reason to focus on technology collectives is that they have had a stronger staying power than the various independent media centers. Indeed, the CMAQ was archived in 2012 when no one wanted to mobilize for technical maintenance work (personal communication, Koumbit network). Also, with the appearance of Anonymous and "offensive" computer networks [19], the forms of computer involvement have been transformed in their representations. These offensive forms occur in parallel with a strong resurgence of corporate control over the Internet [20]. Finally, an important reason for situating this study in a particular time period is to maintain relative anonymity for those currently involved in these initiatives while allowing for documentation of an important period of popular resistance, about which few final conclusions have been drawn.

Internal Logics and Justifications

By focusing on the collectives aiming to offer services, it is important to place them in their own logic, of communication infrastructure for the movement. This is opposed to the market strategies of the services offered on the Internet. Indeed, on the Internet, the services are in a continuous competition and at the beginning of the 90s, the free service is established as a criterion for most of them. While some analysts point to the need for these communication media to achieve a stronger pull effect through a large audience [21], it is important to remember that monetization also plays a central role [22]. The idea of a large audience serves to give a tool a central role in people's lives, e.g., people without an email address or telephone were once seen as difficult to reach. This monetization, in the context of Web 2.0, involves a massive accumulation of information about site visitors, among other things to find out their consumption habits [23]. This information is usually seen as trivial by the users, but for example, when Microsoft bought Hotmail in 1998, it was a free service with 9 million users, which was purchased for $44 per user [24]. The reason why such an acquisition can be economically viable is that the issue is to understand the users, who move from one service sold by one company to another, allowing to have more information about the users. This makes it possible to offer advertisements that are much more targeted than in newspapers, as with Facebook, or to make recommendations that are more precise than those of a bookseller, since they are based on the consumption habits of millions of people, as with Amazon [25]. While in the early 2000s, sales of records and films collapsed [26], the free nature of many of these products having attracted people to the Internet, the companies that succeeded in monetizing the practices of Internet users became the most important [27].

It is in the face of this consolidation of Internet structures into a surveillance empire that the creation of shared infrastructure by the movement becomes crucial. Indeed, collectives that offer services on the Internet generally aim to ensure that they have no incriminating information for their users (personal communications, Koumbit). Moreover, the financing strategies of these collectives are different from those of the large technology companies that emerged in the early 2000s. Indeed, it is well known that the companies that made a profit from the Internet used speculative investments from private actors in order to obtain a large user base, often even before finding monetization strategies [28]. However, the services of technology collectives tend instead to obtain recurrent funding in order to maintain their activities over time, without attempting to create a critical mass of users. Prices, or suggested donations, are weighted according to operating costs, rather than market costs, which are zero anyway. Thus, by selling or offering for free services that do not spy on their users, computer scientists cut themselves off from a source of profit greater than that offered by commercial strategies. In short, it is interesting to see how demarketing strategies are deployed in the context of these resistance practices that are contrary to those of the market.

Finally, it is important to mention that horizontal organization plays a central role in these different organizations [29]. These egalitarian practices are said to bring benefits, especially in terms of learning, personal development and mutual respect for differences [30]. An important disadvantage of this form of involvement is that it is often characterized by lower salaries [31], yet these collectives have shaped the development of the Internet infrastructure.

Research Questions

Furthermore, one of the major differences between the four groups mentioned (tao.ca, resist.ca, riseup.net, koumbit) is the status of the people doing the computer work. Indeed, in these four initiatives, some have paid employees, some do not, some have paid services, some have voluntary services and some encourage their users to make regular donations. In doing so, it is possible to see how the fit between political involvement and and work is articulated for members of these different organizations. How do the strategies of demarchandization manifest themselves in these groups? How does the meaning given to work in these different groups change at this time? Is a cooperative form such as Koumbit's, where workers are salaried and services are sold at market prices, necessarily less political than the voluntary involvement in services offered on a voluntary basis? Let us detail these three research questions.

In the case of these various organizations, it is important to see that the meaning of the practices, of free software, of providing free or at least decommercialized services remains central to the motivation of workers, who come to set up services in order to be able to get out of the traditional commercial circuits. However, there are several contradictions in these practices. Is the establishment of low-cost services for left organizations the best way to ensure that left individuals, groups and organizations retain control over their data? How does the competition of one free commercial product with another free product, or even in some cases, with a paid product, occur? How do we explain the continued existence of these organizations despite the decline of progressive information networks?

The work and practices of software development carried out by the workers of these collectives are seen both as a construction of a new and better world and as a collective defense against the appropriation of data by capitalist corporations. How does this vision of practice justify difficult working conditions? How does the interconnection of everyday life with these services lead to more work?

Looking at the spectrum of practices of reappropriating technology infrastructures, it is possible to see variations in the remuneration strategies used, from "classic" volunteer activism to paid work, frequently seen as apolitical. It is also possible to see a spectrum in monetization strategies, from free service to pay-per-use. Are these strategies in any way related to workers' political engagement? What is the vision of political struggle during this period from the perspective of these workers?