Replacing the X Window System: Looking at how Free Software Organizations replaces legacy code and how new standards are being created

Abstract

Organizations involved in Free Software have pioneered new ways of thinking about intellectual property, collaboration and elaboration. These organizations are bound together in varying degrees, through means of technology, legal circumstances and common goals in an environment that is in a constant cycle of change. This thesis looks at a case where actors within the realm of Free Software are in a process of replacing one standard with a new one. The necessity of gaining consensus on standard ways of enabling interaction between the technologies that they create and maintain is something that is required for these projects in order to achieve stable points of interaction throughout their cycles of development. The thesis investigates a case that carries with it a controversy; the controversy is explored through interviews and online material analysis by drawing on methods and concepts from Science and Technology studies (STS). First, the thesis explores in which ways the organizations are tied together and what considerations they make when choosing the technologies they use in their solutions. Second, it looks at how the process of creating a new standard have initiated not only a new alternative to the initially proposed standard, but also an underlying debate on whether a standard is necessary on the discussed layer of technology. The findings reveal how software is being used as an argument in discussions about how distributed infrastructures should be designed and how these arguments can be shaped by values. The thesis also serves as an example of how efforts of standardization can be counterproductive in the sense that the end result can turn into a more complex infrastructure than what was first intended.