I Walk the Open Road:
Toward an Open Source Philosophy
by
Robert Cooksey
Master Thesis
The European Graduate School
Division of Media and Communications
2005
Thesis Adviser: Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schirmacher

I Walk the Open Road 1
Contents
Preface
The Trumping of Ethical Questions through Actualization and Confessions of the
Influence of Others on the Techniques Herein...................................................................3
Part One
An Overview of Open Source Software and Its Components in the Context of an
Investigation of Open Source as a Concept Independent of Its Actualization in the
Software Movement...........................................................................................................8
The Open Source Software Movement and Its Partisans...........................................8
Open Source as a Philosophical Topic............................................................................9
The Definition of Open Source Software According to the Publications of the
“Open Source Initiative”.................................................................................................12
An Elaboration of Source Code as Related to Software and Machine Code, and
the Dismissal of Its Description through Comparison to These Terms.................14
Part Two
A Philosophical Investigation of the Concepts of “Open” and “Source” and the
Relations to One another In Various Forms of Their Expression in the Presence of
Dasein..............................................................................................................................16
From Source Code to Sourc(e/ing).................................................................................16
Source in Relation to Heidegger’s Origin....................................................................18
Source as Expression in Quotidian Language as an Indication of ”Catalysis” ...19
A Philosophical Description of Source as an Intensive Ordinate through a
Return to Heidegger’s Origin and an Application of Deleuzian Ontology..........22
Source as the Space of Emergence into the Open of Dasein’s Being-Open-To Her
Disinhibitor in the Absence of (Dis)Inhibition..........................................................24
Open To, Open(ness), and the Open as Exposure and Appearance in the
Presence of Dasein...........................................................................................................27
Recapitulation...................................................................................................................30
How a Source Becomes Open Through an Opening of its Opening To the
Intensive Differences of an Inhabited Open..............................................................31
Part Three
A Re-Examination of Source Code, Its Differentiation as Open Source Code, and an
Analysis of The Open Source Definition in the Light of The Previous Philosophical
Investigation....................................................................................................................34
Life Techniques that Overcome Ourselves .................................................................37
Addendum...............................................................................................................................39
Appendices
Appendix A
The Open Source Definition..........................................................................................41
Introduction...................................................................................................................41
1. Free Redistribution...................................................................................................41
2. Source Code...............................................................................................................41
3. Derived Works...........................................................................................................41