Benjamin Mako Hill

Writing and Publications

This page is a far from incomplete list of my writings. You can find links to articles I write, plus many substantial pieces in line, by visting copyrighteous, my blog. While my blog is a bit of a grab-bag, you can narrow the field by selecting articles by category in the side-bar on the right.

Published Works

Books

• The Official Ubuntu Book (1st ed. 2006, 2nd ed. 2007): I am the first author of both editions of the best-selling Official Ubuntu book co-written with Jono Bacon and many other contributors from the Ubuntu community. Parts of the book are distributed on official ubuntu CDs and the book is released and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license which allows for royalty-free copying, distribution, and modification. The book is published by Pearson's Publishing and is currently being translated into several languages.
  Second Edition Book: Amazon | Complete List of Sources
  First Edition Book: Complete List of Sources
  Translations: German | Spanish | Japanese
• Debian GNU/Linux 3.x Bible (2005): I am the first author of a book co-written with David Harris and Jaldhar Vyas and with the help list of other contributors and editors from the Debian community. The book is geared primarily at beginners and helps introduce Debian's sarge distribution with information on running software on the desktop, on a server and geared either toward an Internet or intranet environment. The book has been translated into several languages.
  Find/Buy Books: Complete List of Sources
  Publisher's Info Page: Link

Academic Publications (Peer-reviewed/Refereed)

• Revealing Errors: This article makes the case for increased attention to and analysis of errors in humanist studies and by technology activists. It describes how errors can reveal invisible technologies and gives a number of examples. I used the publication of this piece to launch the Revealing Errors weblog. The piece was the featured article in the issue on errors of the Media/Culture Journal edited by Mark Nunes.
  Published Online: Link
• How Free Became Open and Everything Else Under the Sun: This is the second article jointly authored with Biella Coleman. The essay attempts to confront the variability of the application of Free and Open Source relationships through an analysis of three examples and through an look at FOSS philosophy and practice. It argues that Free Software exists as a politically agnostic field of practice — built on and through a broadly defined philosophy. It analyzes the way that this philosophy is well suited for the spread of FOSS technologies and its translation into the terms of radically different, even oppositional, social and political movements. The article was published in the Australian peer reviewed journal Media/Culture in their Open issue. The issue was edited by Felix Stalder and McKenzie Wark.
  Published Online: Link
  Also Available: PDF | RTF
• The Social Production of Ethics in Debian and Free Software Communities: Anthropological Lessons for Vocational Ethics: This article, co-authored with Biella Coleman, will be published in an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed collection of articles edited by Stefan Koch being published by Idea Group Publishing on July 1, 2004. Because of copyright assignments, I have not put an article online. Contact me via email if you are interested in the topic and would like additional information. (October 2003)
  Available: Page Scans | Book Info
• Quality and the Reliance on Individuals in Free Software Projects: (Co-authored with Martin Michlmayr) This short piece was written for and published in the Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Workshop on Open Source Software Engineering. It looks at some the problems that can arise in free/open source software projects that rely heavily on one central or lead developer and describe some of the methods that Debian has experimented with in resolving these types or problems. (March 2003)
  Available: PDF

Semi-Academic (Conference Papers, etc.)

• Breakfast Cereal and Inband Signaling: I wrote an article on the story of the famous Cap'n Crunch whistle that could be used to get free phone calls and submitted it, along with an actual whistle, to an art exhibition called System.hack() at the Multimedia Institute in Zagreb, Croatia. The exhibition aimed to celebrate great "hacks" and expose them to a larger population of non-hackers. The article was also printed in a book that accompanied the show.
  Publishined Online: Link (English) | Link (Croatian)
• Reflections on Free Software Past and Future: I was asked to write a series of reflections on Free and Open Source Software along the lines of "where have we been, where are we going" for a special issue of the peer reviewed journal First Monday. In this short essay, I discuss the often underappreciated role of freedom in the free and open source movement and I discuss the importance of what I'm calling parallel derived development as a new development paradigm that I suspect will play an important role in the Free and Open Source Software communities in the future.
  Published Online: Link
• To Fork or Not To Fork: Lessons From Ubuntu and Debian: This essay explores the experience of the Ubuntu project in creating a distribution derived from Debian as an example of what is becoming an increasingly important twist on traditional free software development methods. It argues that the scale of certain free software projects are forcing developers toward a new kind of forking using technologies like distributed version control and host of other technical and social tools and processes. It explores some of the early successes and failures of the Ubuntu project in this regard, describes some of the techniques in question, and argues for the the techniques' applicability and importance in a wide range of free software projects. This paper was first published in the proceedings of Linuxtag 2005. I am also interested in publishing a version this article in a magazine or journal. Please contact me if you are interested.
  Available: HTML | XML Source
• Problems and Strategies in Financing Voluntary Free Software Projects (draft): This essay explores the problems and benefits of paying developers in volunteer free and open source projects and surveys strategies that projects have used to successfully finance development while maintaining their volunteer nature. This paper was based off a talk I gave at FISL 5.0 in Porto Alegre and then published in the proceedings of Linuxtag 2005. I'd like to expand it with input from the larger community and perhaps package it as a Linux Documentation Project HOWTO as I hear they are looking for more non-technical documents. In addition to the LinuxTag conference proceedings, this was also published on the Free Software community portal Advogato.
  Published Online: Link
  Also Available: HTML | PDF | TXT | XML Source | More Info

Non-Academic Publications (Magazines, etc.)

• Wikinews and Multi-Pespectival Reporting: I wrote this short article for the MIT Center for Future Civic Media about the Wikinews project. It makes several points about online news reporting while exploring some of the academic speculation on why the Wikinews project has struggled. (2007-10-03)
  Published Online: Link
• Free Culture Advanced: A short article published in the FSF Members bulletin making a call for a free culture movement that parallels the free software movement. (Summer 2007)
  Republished here: HTML | PDF | LaTeX Source
• Liberating iPods in Cambridge: In fall 2006, I organized an iPod Liberation Party. I documented the whole process and project in an article published at Linux.com which describes my event and gives advice for other who might want to run their own versions. (2006-11-07)
  Published Online: Link
• Ubuntu Developer Summit Paris Reports: I wrote two articles for NewsForge on the happenings of the Ubuntu developer summit. The articles were titled Planning for Ubuntu Edgy: A mid-week report from the Ubuntu developer's conference (2006-06-22) and Ubuntu Developer Summit Paris: New alliances, new horizons (2006-06-28).
  Published Online: Link (Part 1) Link (Part 2)
• Notes on the GPLv3: In this featured article at NewsForge, I talk about what I think is really at stake in the GPL revisions process and how we, as a community, can best proceed to the best possible license. (2005-01-28)
  Published Online: Link
• Freedom's Standard Advanced?: This is a slightly reworked version of Towards a Standard of Freedom that I made for Mute Magazine. It was published in Mute Volume 2, Number 1 in Winter 2005. It is available in the print version and also on Mute's website.
  Published Online: Link
• Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement: This is a critical article about Creative Commons that calls for strong ethical position on freedom in creative works and describes why Creative Commons has become increasingly bad at providing this. It was published on the Free Software community portal Advogato. A French adaptation was also published on Libroscope.
  Published Online: Link (EN) | Link (FR)
  Also Available: HTML | ReST
• United Article on RFID: This short article on Radio Frequency IDs was commissioned by Mute Magazine. It gives a brief introduction to RFIDs and explors both sides of the current privacy debate around the technology. It will be appearing in the upcoming print issue of Mute. (Summer 2004).
  Available: TXT
• Untitled Article on Bittorrent: The following short article was commissioned by Mute Magazine and appeared the M27 Winter/Spring 2004 edition. (September 2003)
  Available: html | PDF | TXT | TeX Source
• Software (,) Politics and Indymedia: This essay was commissioned by Mute Magazine although it may be largely reborn before it is read in their pages. The essay looks at four pieces of software used by Independent Media Centers and the way that the slightly differing functionality and technical design affects changes in the publishing structure created by the software and reflecting different political ideologies—toward software and more generally. (March 2003)
  Available: PDF | TXT | HTML
• The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth: My Story of Unlearning: This is an essay I've written for Shikshantar, an NGO in India. This is a personal narrative that describes my journey as a geek and a free software developer. I talk about ADD, Ritalin, activism and technology. I've put a huge amount of effort, thought, and revision into this and it's quite an easy read. I encourage you to take a look at it. It was published in Vimukt Shiksha in print and availble Link. (November 2002)
  Available: HTML | PDF | TXT | SGML Source

Unpublished Undergraduate Academic Projects

While reading these, please keep in mind that they are written by an undergraduate student and that many during my first and second years. My projects and papers suffer from problems of scale and common mistakes normal in beginners' work. I am providing these projects because I have heard people express interest in reading them and because I love critical commentary and feedback. Don't hesitate to get back to me at mako@atdot.cc.

• Literary Collaboration and Control: This is my final undergraduate project at Hampshire College. It seeks to leverage an analysis of collaborative literary creation from historical, technological, and legal philosophical perspectives toward a critique of individualized literary control. (May 2003)
  Available: Project Homepage

• Short Essays from Stephen Harris's Origins of Reading: Feel free to check out the course website or the professor's website. As part of my work for the class, I'm writing a series of short (500 and 1500 word essays) which attempt to ask questions about reading on, through, and with new technology. So far, I've uploaded the following essays which I think other people might want to take a look at:
  • Thoughts on Computers, Readers and Text as Data (Final Paper) (PDF)
  • Bibliographies and Markup (PDF)
  • Procedural and Descriptive Markup: DocBook and HTML (PDF)
  • LyX: Challenging the Word Processor as Typesetter (PDF)
  • Kuro5hin: Online Moderation and the Democratization of the Editor (PDF)
  • She Hate My Futon and Literary Reinvention through Technology (PDF)