Rhetorically problematic

[dariusk]

Posting the document to Github with the stated intent "that it will be shared, edited, forked, remixed, translated, and hacked" is a prime example of openwashing. I work in the open source software development world, and so I spend a lot of time on Github. Just because something is on Github and has a permissive license doesn't make it particularly open. One can ask the following questions of any project:

• If I file an issue (as I am doing now), what is the likelihood that it will be addressed?
• If I file a pull request, will the maintainers engage with it and possibly merge in my changes?
• If these changes are made, will there be an official release of the project that announces the incorporated new changes? Is that even feasible?

As it stands, it seems like this project is on Github so that people can copy it and do new things with it. Which is fine, but kind of odd. If this were a software project, that would make some kind of sense: there is value in at least having access to the source code of a project so you can fix bugs in your own local branch. But this project is an authored piece of writing; essentially it's a group blog post. And a blog post, posted on Github or not, will always have its "source code" available -- you're looking right at it!

The above reasons lead me to believe that the existence of this document on Github is weird at best and disingenuous at worst.

See this blog post from Ian Bogost for further elucidation (and for once, I can recommend that you read the comments).

[whump]

Well, I was going to submit a pull request to replace the document with, "here's some fluffy techo-utopian bullshit to distract you while we privatize all the public wealth from the last century and a half of public education."

But your comments are much more civil.

[lucasrizoli]

I would agree that "the existence of this document on Github is weird at best and disingenuous at worst." It seems to misunderstand the purpose and practicalities of public code repositories, to confuse senses of "source" or to over-extend it as an analogy.

But, I realize, my sentiment may just be knee-jerk.

[audreywatters]

I would welcome that pull request, Whump.

To respond to dariusk: I don't know that posting this on Github is a "prime example of openwashing." I'm not sure that I was making any specific claims to "openness" or to my open "cred" by posting it here, but golly, I sure appreciate your mansplaining how GitHub and open source work to me.

I realize you see GitHub as a place to store code for software projects, but it certainly works just as well for text projects too. Granted many folks are more comfortable using something like Google Docs (you can see the activity on the version P2PU posted there http://bit.ly/learner-rights is greater than the activity here). Good grief, this is certainly not the only text-based project here on GitHub. It's not the only text-based repo on my GitHub account.

There have been forks of this repo made. I have responded to the pull requests (although sure, they've simply fixed minor typos and Markdown errors). You raise a good point about how changes -- substantive changes, not just grammatical and "coding" errors -- will be incorporated here. I'm not sure. I think that's why I like Whump's pull request so much, honestly.

The great irony here -- for me at least. I don't know if you'll agree -- is that I was an "outsider" in that "insider" meeting in Palo Alto. I am a freelance writer -- not associated with an institution or an investor or a startup or a university or a Gates Foundation-funded entity or what have you. To rail against my GitHub repo -- as though this is a representative and reprehensible action of some sort of all-powerful, all-corporate endeavor -- is fine. Whatever. But I think you've misidentified the enemy here and ignored how power works (and how it might've worked within the event from which this document emerged). Indeed, to watch the number of comments suddenly here, after Ian Bogost's blog post, demonstrates precisely that.

[Katemfd]

This is my first time looking around GitHub because that's how non-tech I am, but I've signed up and hopped in to say that one of the things that Audrey has really led for me in this whole discussion is a frank reflection on what insider/outsider can mean even to those in the room (or those not familiar with GitHub). This isn't an easy moment for higher education, because an initiative which has a ton of right stuff going on overreached itself primarily in the title, that in turn generated a whole lot of over-excited media coverage, and then accidentally triggered a landslide that was really waiting to happen.

For me, Audrey's right that neither the document nor the signatories to it represent the threat to educational values that should concern us. Interesting that here makes it clearer how text is just provisional source code for thinking with -- educators are so trained to think of text as some kind of last word. So not.

[rogerwhitson]

I share Kate's concern - basically not the practice of placing the document on GitHub, but the question of which version of the text will be used by admins as the "real" one? It seems the media coverage has already answered that question, and IMO it's unlikely that any revision will be taken as seriously as the first one. This is all I meant on Ian's post by "open-washing" - and perhaps that wasn't the best term to use. We're lead to believe that the text is open, when effectively the text has already been authored and its meaning is effectively (if not intentionally) already fixed.

[rogerwhitson]

To respond to Audrey, I feel that one of the difficult things about this period of time is that we don't quite know where the power is yet. It could be w/ academics like Ian. It could be w/ the coverage of these events on the Chronicle of Higher Ed, it could also be in the ed tech world. We just don't know. It's in flux.

[akrewson]

Posted a summary and links to the document and some reaction in a Sakai class at the University of North Carolina, unironically and with relevance. It's a media law class, and we opened the class with critiques of Barlow's 1996 declaration of independence of cyberspace. Intrigued, will keep watching.

[jacalata]

mansplaining? You think that because you're female, he ignored your obvious expertise on gihub and openness? I'm not seeing it.