"Hackers for Freedom", this 55-minute long documentary takes us to meet with those who, from India to the United States via Europe, are experimenting with the emancipation tools of "free software" in order to bring concrete solutions in a multitude of fields in which collective practices known as "open" - thus "non-proprietary" - are spreading : in agriculture, with "free" seeds, in health, with Open Source medicines, or in education, thanks to a free access to knowledge...
Resistants of the "Free" software field see it as a philosophical and political issue, as much as a societal choice, while the contributory and emancipatory practices of "Free" software are beginning to spread far beyond the IT field alone, for the benefit of the Commons...
Free software, free and open source seeds, open source hardware, generic medicine or alternative treatments and free access to knowledge... Objects, devices, machines, concepts, reproducible to infinity by all who wish, thanks to the free distribution of their blueprints.
The founding legal principles of free software serve as an example of the battle won against the dominant model of intellectual property. Since then, collective and contributing practices of “Free” are flourishing in many other domains. Their principal attraction is designing alternatives to the system of marketing and control, whether in relation to technology, ecology, the defense of public services or culture. By stressing the importance of freedom, cooperation and sharing, they revive users’ autonomy and power. They can as such contribute to the emergence of a world that might be liberated of copyright and patents for the benefit of the Commons. This is perhaps the challenge of these utopias; every large-scale social and political revolution is above all a cultural revolution."
Featuring : Kenneth Roelofsen, Karen Sandler, Richard Stallman, James Boyle, Hervé Le Crosnier, Shamnad Basheer, Pierre-Yves Gosset, Thomas Bernardi, Kwame Yamgnane, Lucile Vareine, Asa Dotzler, Denelle Dixon, Abhiram Ravikumar, Pascal Chevrel, Lionel Maurel, Martine Cailbault, Nicolas Huchet, David Gouailler, Xavier Niel, Giorgio Regni, David Bollier, Marc Oshima, Vandana Shiva, Guy Standing, Joseph Stiglitz, Pierre Dardot, James Love, Francis Gurry, Anthony Di Franco, Steve Berman, Yann Huon de Kermadec, Olivier Maguet, Vidyashankar R., Marc Bouché, Mick Minchow, Kevin Kenney, Lydia Brasch, Vinod Kumar, Bhavani, Mani Kantan, Grégoire Wattinne, Marie-Laure Marcadé, Nicolas Sinoir, Vladimir Ritz, Benjamin Coriat, Marcel Thébault, Michel Dartois.
The original and longer version of this documentary is entitled " Hacking for the Commons" (87' long).
You may watch it in VOD here : vimeo.com/ondemand/hackingforthecommons