The hacker ethic vs netarchical capitalism: free software and peer production within collaborative economic practices in Andalusia

Abstract

Over the last few years the notion of the Collaborative Economy has become increasingly popular despite the lack of consensus around its meaning. This term includes a wide variety of experiences from time banks and urban gardens to startups or digital platforms. The recent expansion of all these initiatives can be linked to a combination of factors such as the technological development, economic recession and other overlapping crises (environmental, care, political…) and changing social values. During 2014-2015, two almost parallel studies were undertaken following a similar methodology. The first one was aimed at defining and identifying Collaborative Economy practices linked to Andalusia’s public universities. The second study searched for entrepreneurship sharing initiatives in the region. The results led to the following question about the nature of the Collaborative Economy: Is it possible to define these practices as postcapitalist initiatives and do they promote a fairer and more equalitarian society or do they respond to capital forces and simply aim to continue extracting and privatizing value which is socially generated? This article analyses a specific set of initiatives identified in Andalusia, those based on open source software and digital production. Its conclusions are that, these initiatives are, up to a point, embedded with the hacker ethic and the logics of open knowledge. Therefore, they could be situated within the promotion of a global commons which is opposed to the hegemonic logics of netarchical capitalism.