Preface to the September 19th, 2014 edition

This ebook collects, all in one place, my main writings from 2005 to 2013 on a specific topic: how Catholics should choose and use software, digital standards and other digital technologies. Please note that, while I usually write "Catholics" here, I believe that most of this ebook applies to all other Christians, and to many other religions too. As far as I know, there was almost nothing in this field when I started, and the situation today is almost the same.

In the last few years, in fact, while the quantity and quality of studies and discussions about "religion, software and the Internet" have increased greatly, they almost always seem to focus only on one side, or level, of the issue: how to not be left behind, that is how to use effectively, for the "institutional purposes" of one's religion, the same software tools and digital standards as everybody else. As if all software and digital standards were, from an ethical point of view, neutral and perfectly equivalent to all the others. This is not the case at all, and I hope this ebook will help you to understand why I say so.

Why this ebook, and how to read it?

All the content of this ebook was already available online somewhere else. By republishing everything in one place, I hope to make it easier to understand the general issue, and consequently to stimulate more discussion and action about it. I also hope to gather more general support for my work in this and related areas, as explained in the "Support" section of my website, http://mfioretti.com.

Another reason for this ebook is to practice ePUB-based self-publishing using exclusively Free Software. This is the very first version, which surely contains formatting errors! Please visit the "Ebooks" section of my website http://mfioretti.com for newer, more polished editions of this and other ebooks of mine. For the same reason, thanks in advance to all those who will send feedback, as well as error reports and ePUB tricks or templates to make this ebook better, to marco@digifreedom.net.

Suggested reading order

The several pieces are arranged here in chronological order, one per chapter. Reading the book as-is may be the best way to proceed gradually and understand how I developed certain concepts. The last chapter, however, is also my most complete work so far on these topics: you may even start from there, and then go back to see how everything started. Your choice!

Copyright and Licensing

"Catholic Social Doctrine And the Openness Revolution: Natural Travel Companions?", here reproduced with permission, was written for, and originally published by, the University of St. Thomas Law Journal, 10 U. St. Thomas L.J. 714 (2013). The Manifesto and Frequently Asked Questions of Elèutheros are under a CC-BY-ND license. The articles from stop.zona-m.net have the license specified on the website.

Free Software's surprising sympathy with Catholic doctrine

(originally published at Linux.com on November 11, 2005)

"The technological configuration underlying the Internet has a considerable bearing on its ethical aspects. Use of the new information technology and the Internet needs to be informed and guided by a resolute commitment to the practice of solidarity in the service of the common good. The Internet requires international cooperation in setting standards and establishing mechanisms to promote and protect that common. Individuals, groups, and nations must have access to these new technologies. Cyberspace ought to be a resource of comprehensive information and services available without charge to all, and in a wide range of languages. The winner in this process will be humanity as a whole and not just a wealthy elite that controls science, technology, and the planet's resources. Determined action in the private and public sectors is needed to close and eventually eliminate the digital divide."

The above statements sound as if they could have been written by Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). In fact, they come from the Vatican Report "Ethics in Internet" (EiI). The FSF position on the same issues is that society "needs information that is truly available to its citizens -- for example, programs that people can read, fix, adapt, and improve, not just operate."

Affinities between Catholic doctrine and Free Software

Technically (and ethically) speaking, Free Software, regardless of its price, can be freely modified and shared, and is free from per-seat costs, royalties, patents, and similar restrictions. The same definition can be applied to file formats and communication protocols. The term Free (with uppercase F) here indicates software and standards available under these conditions. In recent decades, the Catholic Church has published several documents that clearly match this approach to information technology. Here are some examples.

For the purposes of this article, we can regard software programs as a category of machinery. The 1967 Encyclical of Pope Paul VI on the development of peoples "Populorum Progressio" said, "Unless the existing machinery is modified, the disparity between rich and poor nations will increase rather than diminish."

Then in 1971, the Pastoral Instruction "Communio et Progressio" (CeP) on the means of social communication stated:

With the right to be informed goes the duty to seek information. Information does not simply occur; it has to be sought. On the other hand, in order to get it, the man who wants information must have access to the varied means of social communication.

Consequently, the Catholic Church should not use proprietary file formats and computer protocols, since they can become a way to prevent access to information, restrict it or lock end users to any specific (maybe too expensive) software program.

This is very similar to Stallman's request to put an end to proprietary email attachments.

This right to information is inseparable from freedom of communication.

When it comes to computer-based communication, this can be only guaranteed with Free formats and protocols. It also implies that computer users should be free to choose which programs to use for such communication. The same wish was expressed by Stallman.

This freedom of communication also implies that individuals and groups must be free to seek out and spread information. It also means that they should have free access to the media....

An example of the cultural potential of the media can be found in their service to the traditional folk arts of countries where stories, plays, song and dance still express an ancient national inheritance. Because of their modern techniques, the media can make these achievements known more widely. They can record them so that they can be seen and heard again and again and make them accessible even in districts where the old traditions have vanished. In this way, the media help to impress on a nation a proper sense of its cultural identity and by expressing this, delight and enrich other cultures and countries as well.

Many developing countries are already successfully using free software and formats to preserve their cultural heritage since free software can be adapted quickly, at the smallest possible cost, to any language or dialect. Catholic missionaries worldwide should be informed that such tools exist.

Ten years after CeP, Pope John Paul II wrote in the Encyclical "Laborem exercens" that through work, man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfillment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes "more a human being." As long as he

intends his work also to increase the common good developed together with his compatriots, thus realizing that in this way work serves to add to the heritage of the whole human family, of all the people living in the world....

In Christian tradition, the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone....

The Church has always proclaimed that "when a man works he not only alters things and society, he develops himself as well. He learns much, he cultivates his resources, he goes outside of himself and beyond himself."

The GNU Manifesto of the Free Software movement only talks about programming and programmers, but there we can find a vision of work (programming in this case) as a way to become a better person and help others: "The fundamental act of friendship among programmers is the sharing of programs.... GNU serves as an example to inspire and a banner to rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us a feeling of harmony which is impossible if we use software that is not free. For about half the programmers I talk to, this is an important happiness that money cannot replace."

In 2002, besides the above quoted EiI, the Vatican published "The Church and Internet," which reminds us that "Church leaders are obliged to use the full potential of the computer age to serve the human and transcendent vocation of every person" because the Internet "offers people direct and immediate access to important religious and spiritual resources." The same document points out that, as early as 1992, the Pastoral Instruction Aetatis Novae had called two-way communication and public opinion "one of the ways of realizing in a concrete manner the Church's character as communio." The Catholic Church is expected (EiI) "to have a visible, active presence on the Internet and be a partner in the public dialogue about its development" and "be of help by indicating ethical and moral criteria which are relevant to the process."

What about the file formats? The format used to store Church files is even more important than the programs used to access them. Official Church records should last and remain available for millennia. Nothing less durable than parchment, or less freely readable, should be used for these purposes, especially if its availability depends on the survival on any single private company.

Technology recommendations for the Church

The Catholic Church has acknowledged that the Internet is an opportunity too important for all humanity to be missed. However, to the best of my knowledge, the Church has not yet realized (at least officially) that Her concerns and recommendations on social communications should be reflected in the software, file formats, and computer protocols She uses.

The Free Software movement, albeit unintentionally, has already created software "machinery" that fully conforms to all the guidelines cited above. The Catholic Church's vision on means of social communication can be fully realized with free protocols and file formats such as OpenDocument. By itself, choosing the right technology will never be enough to achieve common good, but it is a necessary step in the right direction.

After I started writing this article I discovered two Christian pastors who have, each independently, come to similar conclusions. The first one is Rev. Parris of the Matheteuo Christian Fellowship, a Baptist Church, who has also published several manuals to help churches (and other non-profit institutions) to switch to Free Software. His "Penguin Driven Church Office" is almost exclusively a technical report, but also notes that "Richard Stallman ... may be an atheist, but his view of software has close theological parallels to Christian theology. Proprietary software limits my ability to help my neighbor, one of the cornerstone of the Christian faith."

I also came across a Catholic priest in Italy, Don Paolo La Terra, who is the director of the Diocesan Office of Ragusa (Sicily) for Catholic Education, Culture, School and University, besides teaching in several institutions. In his home page, Don Paolo declares he is convinced that "both the formulation and the philosophy of Open Source are very evangelic" and dedicates to his the readers "a verse which, I think, really is a theological foundation of Free Software: 'Simply I learned about her, and ungrudgingly do I share -- her riches I do not hide away' (The Book of Wisdom 7,13)".

The whole Catholic Church should steer in this direction. Remember the request contained in EiI: "Determined action in the private and public sectors is needed to close and eventually eliminate the digital divide." To this aim, the Church should officially adopt only free (in the sense explained above) file formats and computer protocols, both internally and for any communication with third parties. Practically speaking, this means, at least:

Adopting the Free international standard OpenDocument for office documents in all Catholic institutions worldwide.

Avoiding proprietary file formats and protocols on Catholic Web sites and in official Church documents, and not accepting them in any official communication.

Making sure that all Catholic Web sites are certified as viewable with any browser.

The Elèutheros Manifesto

(published on the Elèutheros website in April 2006)

Introduction

In the modern world, more and more documents and services are made available in digital format. Even if it can be a source of huge progress for all humankind, this phenomenon often happens through technologies which become obsolete in a few years, are incompatible with each other or cannot be afforded by everybody. This fact creates serious obstacles to a really free communication among people, to the preservation of the cultural and spiritual heritage of humankind and to the diffusion of the Word of God.

The mission of the Church can be slowed down also when Her documents, from Holy Scriptures to Encyclicals and other official texts, cannot be distributed freely.

In addition to this, often many Catholics commit a crime, even if only for lack of adequate information,by using illegally installed proprietary software.

The Catholic Church and all Catholics cannot afford anymore to ignore these problems, because they interfere with Her/their mission and because practicable alternatives already exist. Declaration

On the basis of official Church documents like Encyclicals, the article "Free Software's surprising sympathy with Catholic doctrine" and directorates of the Italian Conference of Bishops, we are convinced that there are strong ideal affinities between Christianity, the philosophy of Free Software and the adoption of Open Formats and Protocols (see the Elèutheros Frequently Asked Questions for details. We believe it is evident that the usage of such instruments is much more in line with Catholic Doctrine than fully closed, non Free solutions.

Definition

Elèutheros is an association of Catholics whose mission is to serve the Catholic Church through promotion and development of an always increasing harmony between the doctrinal principles mentioned above and the concrete choices made in the Information Technology field at all levels in the ecclesiastical world: from Parishes to Dioceses, from School to Congregations, up to Bishop Conferences and the Vatican itself.

Objectives

For the reasons mentioned above, Elèutheros intends to:

engage in the study of the Scriptures and the Ecclesiastical Teaching, of classical texts and, in general, of Catholic literature, in order to highlight references, ideas and principles which may sustain the ethical values of Free Software and the adoption of Open Formats and Protocols.

increase among Catholics the awareness of the importance of Free Software and Open Formats and Protocols, as well as their ethical values.

regardless of which software is adopted, propose that only Open Formats and Protocols are used, by all Catholic Organizations to store or manage any kind of digital data, like for example text, images or music. Only this can guarantee that all digital documents are completely accessible to everybody, including those who cannot afford state of the art computers or the purchase of proprietary software, and above all that such documents remain available forever.

propose that, whenever it is possible, Free Software is used instead of proprietary software in all Catholic Organizations.

request that, without exception, teaching of programming and basic Information Technology in all Catholic Schools and Universities is performed using Free Software.

promote, towards all Ecclesiastical Organizations, the creation of directives which require the mandatory adoption, in all Catholic organizations, of the IT solutions proposed by Elèutheros, giving absolute priority to Open Formats.

promote, in all Ecclesiastical Organizations, methods of distribution of all Catholic documents which guarantee the greatest diffusion of the Gospel and of the Church message.

Contacts with other denominations

Catholic inspiration and action for, and inside, the Catholic Church are at the center of the Elèutheros mission. This said, Elèutheros hopes that there will be cooperation with other Christian groups of any denomination, in order to achieve the goals of Elèutheros. Even cooperation or common activities with non-Christian religious groups is not excluded.

The Frequently Asked Questions of the Elèutheros Project

(first published on the Elèutheros website in April 2006)

What does Elèutheros mean?

Elèutheros is ancient Greek for Free: in this context, we mean Free to communicate without restrictions. We were inspired by the verb eleutheròo as used in the Holy Scripture, for example in John 8,32 and Galathians 4,31-5,1.

What is the purpose of the Elèutheros Project?

The promotion, inside the Catholic Church, of the software, computer protocols and file formats more compatible with Her own Doctrine: those Free (as in Freedom) in the sense explained by other questions in this page. To know more on why and how we want to reach this goal, please read the Elèutheros Manifesto.

What is Free Software?

It is software developed with a spirit of Collaboration and Sharing. Therefore, according to Elèutheros, such software is more compatible with Catholic Doctrine than software which is proprietary, that is software which cannot be shared, adapted to the needs of all users and often has license costs or hardware requirements which are not sustainable by the users with less economic possibilities.

Do you believe that Free Software has lower cost than proprietary software?

The lower cost of Free Software, especially in the medium and long term, has been demonstrated by several studies. Cost is important from the point of view of both the Church and Elèutheros, but it is not the reason why Elèutheros was founded. We believe that, regardless of cost, Free Software and file formats should be preferred for ethical reasons, that is for their greater potential to make Information Technology and computer communications more accessible to the poorest regions and users of the world, and not only to them. The passage to non proprietary protocols and file formats like OpenDocument is also necessary to guarantee that the all documents, not just those of the Church, are and remain universally accessible forever.

What are Free and Open file formats and protocols?

A file format is the set of rules which specify how to encode in (binary format) or decode all the data contained inside a document, be it text, an image, a database or any this kind of information.

A computer protocol is the set of rules used by different computer programs (for example an Internet Browser and a Web server) to exchange files or messages of any kind.

File formats and computer protocols can be defined Free and Open if their complete specifications are publicly available, maintained by international, non-profit organizations and useable by everybody without any legal or economic restriction.

Will Elèutheros prepare software Cd-Roms or customized Gnu/Linux distributions?

No, because we don’t see the need for them: a Catholic Free Software user has nothing different, from a practical or didactic point of view, from any other user, only more reasons to use that kind of software. Consequently, Elèutheros will promote, inside the Catholic community, to already existing collections of Free Software.

Do you plan to create Catholic Linux Users Groups (LUGs)?

No, or at least not as an official project goal, for the same reasons explained in the previous questions. There already are many active LUGs in any country, ready to provide technical and teaching support, and being Catholic doesn’t create any special need from this point of view.

So you will not offer any technical support to Catholic institutions and single users?

Yes, but (almost) only to help them to find the right resources. Within the limits of their possibilities, the members of Elèutheros are available (see the question "How can I contact Elèutheros?") to help solving the initial problems of first time Free Software users and, if needed, to help them to find expert users in their neighborhood, who will be able to provide support directly, even in person if possible.

What are the relationship of Elèutheros with non Catholic groups?

Elèutheros is an association of Catholics, and its specific mission is to promote the adoption of open information technologies in the Catholic Church. This, of course, doesn’t exclude participating to discussions, common technical activities and exchange of informations and know-how with members of any other group, be it religious or not, interested in the same issues.

How can I contact Elèutheros?

To receive technical support (within the limits explained in the question "So, you will not offer technical support") please write to support@eleutheros.org. To know more about Elèutheros, discuss possible partnership, establish a direct contact or any other non technical communication with the project, please write to info@eleutheros.org.

Christian endorsement of Free Software increases

(first published at Newsforge.com on April 16, 2006, then moved to Linux.com)

Last November I described the Free Software's Surprising Affinity with Catholic Doctrine. Since then, several important things happened, from feedback by Stallman and other Free SW users to the birth, or acceleration, of some projects specifically based on the concept that Christians have even more reasons than others to adopt Free Software.

What did the Internet say?

The first reaction to "Surprising Affinity” was a robust amount of flames in the related NewsForge forum, something which prompted this interesting question on Christdot: "Seems like if you mention religion on a technology site, you'd better dodge the ensuing flames. I'm not exactly sure why this is. I know it's geeky to not have a social life. But is it geeky to be skeptical? Are the reasons similar?”. More on this later.

The article itself was announced by Mirror of Justice as "an application of Catholic legal theory that had never occurred to them”. David Opderbeck wrote that "Surprising Affinity” approaches a Christian theory of intellectual property and that he intended to do "some serious scholarly work on this in the near future." A.P. Lawrence noted that while fundamentalist religious teaching is, I believe, dangerous and detrimental to society, the loftier and less dogmatic beliefs can be force for desirable social change. Another reader mentioned the piece as something that "would make his mom proud of my affiliation with Free Software!”. Right after publishing my article, I also discovered another one which compares some religious (Christian-specific) concepts to aspects of the Free Software community.

What does Stallman think?

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, is an atheist. We privately discussed possible affinities with Christian philosophy while preparing my interview on Scouting and Free Software. Back then, Stallman wrote to me that "indeed, it seems to me that a sincere Christian must condemn non-free software as satanic in spirit. If you were Satan, and you wanted to corrode the bonds of society, what could be more effective than offering individuals something attractive, profitable or fun, on condition that they refuse to share it with anyone else?" For the same reasons, he added, "Christians should reject proprietary software because it forbids people to express love for their neighbors."

After "Surprising Affinity” was published, I contacted Stallman again to ask permission to include those quotes in this follow-up and to ask what he thinks of my theses. This is his answer to my comment that some Vatican documents sounded like they had been written by him: "People who don't really know my views might think so. Since values such as access, equality, and more equitable distribution of wealth are widely understood, while few understand the concept that freedom to redistribute and change software, people often mistakenly suppose that the Free Software movement is about the former three rather than the last. And they often tell others this. The misinformation has spread widely, but it remains erroneous. I am in favor of extending access to the Internet to everyone, provided that this is done in a way that respects their freedom (i.e., with Free Software). I am in favor of equal rights, and in distributing wealth more equitably. But the primary goal of the Free Software movement is something different and more focused: freedom in using your computer, and freedom to cooperate in a community when doing so."

I had also written that the right to freely choose which programs to use for computer-based communication is the same expressed in Stallman's essay on Treacherous Computing. His reply on this is that "it's a misunderstanding to say that my article is arguing for users ability to 'choose which programs to use.' In fact, those words misrepresent my views entirely. The issue here is whether the user community can develop its own programs to access their data. The aim of Treacherous Computing is to make that impossible." Stallman is obviously right as far as his article goes: my mistake was to not make clear that I was specifically thinking about people who can use Free Software, but would never be able to code or contribute to it in any other way.

What's going on in the USA

Rev. Parris, who I already mentioned in my other article, is the author of "IT as Ministry" and "Penguin in the Pew 2.0” (also available in print), a book which helps Christian ministries discover the advantages of Free Software.

Predictably, whenever he explains this subject, the biggest obstacles Parris faces aren't technical. Just like anybody else, he says, most Christians are "somewhat stagnant." They do not understand or care enough about technology to grasp the nature of the discussion. Resistance to change is quite strong, even among many pastors. He normally counters it by pointing out that change is possible, at any age, and that this is the just message of the Gospel - that anyone can be changed: "whether it's relationships or technology, we are not statues, immobile and unchangeable. We are human. We can learn new things."

To make things even more interesting, Parris adds with a smile, "often Christians think I am trying to conform Scripture to technology, while the non-Christians feel I should leave religion out of the discussion altogether. I get "burned at the stake" on a regular basis by both sides.

None of these obstacles, however, are stopping him and quite a few others. A few weeks after publication of "Surprising Affinity” Parris reported on a third-party project aiming to "web empower 10,000 churches by 2010. Besides his own community, Parris is also active in the US branch of the non-denominational Freely Project, which even encourages non-Christians to participate. Freely and several other groups are also creating a Libre Software Solution Stack for Christian Churches. Eventually, this should become a one-stop meta-repository of software for tasks like Lyrics projection, Bible study or Church management. All these applications already exist. Most of them are already included in, or at least packaged for, all major Gnu/Linux distributions, included the Freely Project default, Ubuntu. Other ongoing activities include writing documentation for the same systems and the creation of templates of all kinds, from OpenDocument letters to LDAP configuration files customized for Church usage. The Freely Project also provides online technical support to ministries, or helps Churches to find local assistance.

A Catholic approach to Information Technology

Here in Italy, following the publication of "Surprising Affinity," Other Catholics and I started to discuss how to build a project with a somewhat more focused scope. This project is now defined, reachable online, and open to new members. Its name is Eleutheros: a Catholic Approach to Information Technology.

Eleutheros (ancient Greek for "Free as in freedom”) starts just where "Surprising Affinity” stopped. The Eleutheros Manifesto begins with the acknowledgment that, unless proper care is taken to choose truly open digital technologies, the universal and perpetual access to the message of the Catholic Church, or to any other kind of information, may be severely limited.

On another level, the Manifesto also points out that even many Catholics use proprietary software illegally, simply for lack of enough information, and that other kinds of software appear much more in line with Catholic doctrine.

The Eleutheros mission is therefore to help all the Catholic Church, from the Vatican to every Parish, Catholic school or single faithful worldwide, to put in practice Her own teachings in the choice and usage of Information Technology. For this reason, one activity of Eleutheros will be the study of the Scriptures, and all official Catholic documents, to highlight all guidelines which may already point towards the adoption of non-proprietary file formats and software.

Other, more operative objectives declared in the Manifesto include working inside the Catholic Church in order to:

Increase the awareness of the ethical reasons to prefer Free Software and non proprietary formats

Request the official adoption, without exceptions, of non proprietary formats and protocols, by all Catholic organizations

Promote migration to Free Software whenever possible

Request that IT teaching in Catholic Schools of every kind is based on Free Software

Unlike many of the other projects previously mentioned, Eleutheros is denominational, meaning that it is a Catholic project specifically targeting the Catholic Church. This doesn't mean that it is a closed group without any interest in the rest of the world. As explicitly stated, both in the Manifesto and the Eleutheros FAQ, cooperation with other religion-oriented Free Software groups is certainly possible, if not requested. Useful partnerships, for example, may be established to package, localize and document any kind of Church-related Free Software, but certainly this is not the only possibility. Suggestions are welcome!

Right now, Eleutheros only counts Italian members, but the project is obviously open to Catholics worldwide. To contact the Eleutheros community, be it to join or simply to know more about the project or exchange information, just send an email to info@eleutheros.org.

Two final questions

Is it geeky to be skeptical?

Should (any) religion be ignored when evaluating Free (or any other) software?

I will let Newsforge readers answer the first question. As far as the second one is concerned, I will answer it myself -- with another question: If the Free in Free Software is about Freedom, not price, why should it be a surprise if one's ethical beliefs, whatever they are, are taken into account when making a software choice?

The real effect of the Internet on Catholicism (or any other religion)

(first published in December 2009)

The Online Loser Guide that I that I just wrote was born also as a reaction to a vision of the Internet (haven for perverted and terrorists, huge time-wasting toy or mere work tool) very limited and narrow-minded.

A proof that the effects of digital technologies are much deeper is in how they are influencing the religious sphere, in ways still largely ignored by traditional, mainstream media and by many blogs. The following paragraphs contain some evidence of this trend in Catholicism, but I'd guess that the same general concept is valid for any other religion (more on this at the end).

TV news shows do report, every now and then, about the Catholic Church and the Internet, but often it is very superficial coverage. All you get is announces and comments about project and activities which, while being without doubt welcome and really laudable, are nothing but extensions to a new media of stuff that was already happening before computers. The official Vatican page on YouTube, Internet streaming from Catholic TV or Radio stations like TeleRadio Padre Pio, software gadgets for Rosary on iPhone or Breviaries for the Android, or even spiritual advice on digital problems like "Is it a sin to dowload movies or buy pirated CDs?" have one thing in common: they use the existing digital technology, accepting without questions its more popular tools, to distribute the same informations and "services" of the pre-Internet era, in the same way, that is broadcasting from Church down to faithfuls.

While prime time TV coverage stops here, other things are happening in this field. Things at a different, more interesting level, if nothing else for its potential concrete effects in the medium and long term. The Vatican had already noted back in 2002 that "the technological configuration underlying the Internet has a considerable bearing on its ethical aspects" (Ethics in Internet). Later on other voices inside the Church started investigating if the official Church language in the field of Social Communications isn't too unidirectional, that is too tied to a vision in which "professionals" must instruct the faithfuls in the most effective way, rather than one of a world where communication has became a "many to many" phaenomenon (Fr. J. Fox, SDB, "Digital Virtues").

The fact that these are not isolated cases but signs of a more general trend would seem to be confirmed by more recent news. On June 3rd, 2009, Cardinal Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, announced that they are evaluating the possibility to introduce specific courses on these themes for priests and seminarists, in order to remain conscious and effective witnesses of the Gospel even in this digital era. Even the theme chosen by Pope Benedict XVI for the 2010 World Day of Social Communications is "The priest and pastoral ministry in a digital world: new media at the service of the Word".

Initiatives like these, at those levels, may bring to closer and deeper dialogues and relationships between the Church and its faithfuls, that is to a scenario where, side by side to the "unidirectional communications", which certainly won't disappear, there will be Priests who, according to Card. Hummes, "surf side by side with other digital people in the great sea of communication". Such an evolution would be much deeper and relevant than any of the cases mentioned at the beginning. Another field of Catholic investigation that may bring to interesting results is the one about the nature of digital technologies: are they purely neutral tools? Can Catholics just adopt the most popular software tools and use them as most other people do, without thinking to how they really work, or should they pay more attention? It is questions like these who brought the author of this article to study Free Software’s surprising sympathy with Catholic doctrine, which in turn gave birth to Project Eleutheros, a Catholic approach to ICT.

None of these projects will produce any visible effect in the short term, but activities like these may have many more consequences for religious people than the simple distribution of religious content and news also through the Internet. We'll see. In the meantime, here at the Stop! we'd like to know more about the impact of the Internet on other religions: if you have relevant links and information, please let us know!

The departure of Benedict XVI? Not on this computer, sorry

(first published on February 28th, 2013)

In the modern world, more and more documents and services are made available in digital format. Even if it can be a source of huge progress for all humankind, this phenomenon often happens through technologies which become obsolete in a few years, are incompatible with each other or cannot be afforded by everybody. This fact creates serious obstacles to a really free communication among people, to the preservation of the cultural and spiritual heritage of humankind and to the diffusion of the Word of God.

The paragraph above is the introduction of the Eleutheros Manifesto that I and other Catholics wrote almost seven years ago. Today, February 28th, 2013, Pope Benedict's last meeting in Vatican provides a perfect example of those obstacles we were, and remain, worried about. Because not everybody can follow it online, not from its source at least.

Vatican Player is "a multi-functional, multimedia tool which [among other things] allows you to watch live footage of all Papal celebrations." News.Va is the online News Portal of the Vatican. Neither of those two websites allows universal vision of today's and other Catholic events, because they adopt a technology that only works on certain browsers and software platforms. By doing so, they exclude, without any real need, all people, Catholic or not, who for any reason cannot afford those specific systems, or may have plenty of other valid reasons to not use them.

This is exactly the reason why the Eleutheros Manifesto suggests, among other things, that:

Regardless of which software is adopted, only Open Formats and Protocols are used, by all Catholic Organizations to store or manage any kind of digital data, like for example text, images or music. Only this can guarantee that all digital documents are completely accessible to everybody, including those who cannot afford state of the art computers or the purchase of proprietary software, and above all that such documents remain available forever.

I hope this day will also be, for all Catholics, an opportunity for reflection on that and other suggestions in the Manifesto.

Catholic Social Doctrine And the Openness Revolution: Natural Travel Companions?

(first published with the University of St. Thomas Law Journal and the citation of your piece which is 10 U. St. Thomas L.J. 714 (2013))

(the numbers in curly braces in this section point to the notes in the final "Footnotes" chapter")

INTRODUCTION

Catholic Social Doctrine ("CSD") offers guidelines for the development and management of society inspired by the Gospel. "Openness" is the collective name given in this paper to a specific set of attitudes, technologies, concrete practices, and legal infrastructures, all driven by principles that include a "share-and-share alike" approach to ownership and reuse of goods, and massive usage of the Internet for affordable, large-scale collaborative design and mutual support. Such characteristics make Openness particularly well suited to address (among other things) the "real needs" of many people, as defined later in the paper. Thanks to software and the Internet, many spontaneous communities worldwide, whose common characteristic is Openness, have already developed collaborative goods, services, and ways of working that, for all the reasons above, may be relevant in CSD.

The first two sections of this paper present CSD's main points and, respectively, the real nature of software and its effects on modern society. The third section gives a general definition of Openness, followed by short explanations and practical examples of some of its main applications. The fourth and final section explores the many links between CSD and Openness and the possible synergies and actions that may result from them.

1. A SHORT, AD HOC SUMMARY OF CATHOLIC SOCIAL DOCTRINE

A. Goal, Scope and Key Principles

As far as we are concerned, society may be defined as the set of principles and structures through which people see and organize themselves at the civil (non-governmental organizations or "NGOs"), economic (exchange of goods and services), and political (laws and role of the State) levels.{1}

Based on the Ten Commandments, the Gospel, human wisdom, and science, CSD is "a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new,"{2} about development and management of society. Therefore, CSD only defines general principles: "The Church has no models to present; models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations ... [CSD is just] an indispensable and ideal orientation."{3} In order to highlight their connections with the rest of the paper, some of the fundamental principles of CSD are briefly summarized in the next paragraphs. Other relevant, recurring themes, like the ownership of means of production, are also mentioned throughout the paper.

1.1. Human Dignity, Development, and Real Needs

In CSD, the dignity and development of the human person are always at the center: society must serve all the individual persons within it, not the other way around. The human development that CSD proposes is an integral answer to the real needs of each person. "[I]f it does not involve the whole man and every man, it is not true development."{4} Therefore, such development is achievable only by combining many material and immaterial contributions, from food and shelter to education, equal opportunities, and more. Besides, human development is primarily a vocation, not something that institutions can entirely provide from the outside: true human development begins with a personal free choice and assumption of responsibility.{5}

The concept of true human development is strictly and constantly connected throughout the whole history of CSD (if not of all Catholicism) with the one of "real needs:" "the State's intervention in the economic environment must be neither invasive nor absent, but commensurate with society's real needs."{6} Pope Benedict XVI says that "[t]he more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them."{7}

What are the "real needs" that CSD cares about? It is certainly not up to me to give a complete answer to such a high, crucial question. As far as this paper is concerned, however, my understanding of the concept is that "real needs" are those that are a more or less direct consequence and expression of human rights.{8}

Needs that, instead, are mere, more or less forced, consequences of external pressures like consumerism, peer pressure, cultural colonization, and/or bad planning and management of common infrastructures should generally not be listed into the "real needs" category: having to own and daily drive a car, for example, only because there is no public transportation in one's city would not be a real need.

1.2. Common Good

Common good is defined as the sum total of social conditions that enable human development{9} "on the basis of a balanced hierarchy of values"{10} that maximizes the possibility of what would be authentically good for groups or single persons ("real needs," again), both in the short and in the long term.

1.3. Participation

In CSD, participation is active contribution to the common good from each individual: something that is necessary because it enhances society, and because everyone has something to contribute.

1.4. Solidarity

Human beings are social by nature (which, incidentally, is just what the Web 2.0 meme is all about),11 but their true unity in society must come from free acceptance of the commandment of Jesus Christ to love one's neighbor. Consequently, while solidarity implies social charity and mutual support, in CSD it is never a demand for a Welfare State. Its goal is that human persons are not made dependent on the rest of society.{12}

1.5. Subsidiarity

Placing Man at the center implies subsidiarity—that is devolution of effective power to "the lowest and most local level compatible with the common good" (which sometimes demands "that decisions which affect many people are sometimes taken at a higher level").13 Only in this way can each single human being, or association of human beings, practice as much freedom and responsibility as possible. This is perfectly in line with the will to avoid some "all-encompassing Welfare State." Simplifying a lot, subsidiarity is not mere consultation ("Do you like this law proposal?") but genuine participation ("Shall we write this proposal together?").{14}

In order to respect both subsidiarity and solidarity principles, "the State's intervention in the economic environment must be neither invasive nor absent, but commensurate with society's real needs."{15}

2. A Short Note on CSD and Intellectual Property

A complete definition and discussion of intellectual property would be way beyond the scope of this paper. At the same time, since many parts of Openness directly and strongly depend on alternative applications (or strong critiques) of this concept, it is mandatory to provide a minimum of definitions and background.

The World Trade Organization defines intellectual property rights as "the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds."16 These rights are managed through legal structures as copyright, patents, and trademarks. The World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO"), in turn, lists as such creations "inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce."{17}

Chapter 1 of the official WIPO handbook states that countries have laws to protect intellectual prop- erty for two main reasons: One is to give statutory expression to the moral and economic rights of creators in their creations and the rights of the public in access to those creations. The second is to promote, as a deliberate act of Government policy, creativity and the dissemination and application of its results and to encourage fair trading which would contribute to economic and social development.{18}

Advocates of intellectual property define it as "critical in a world economy that is increasingly dependent on innovation."{19}

Many organizations and scholars worldwide, instead, strongly criticize the current regime of intellectual property for several reasons, including, but not limited to:

outright rejection of the very idea that intellectual property exists, or should exist at all;{20}

the continuous restriction of public domain caused by ever increasing copyright extensions;{21} and

patents seen as obstacles to real innovation, especially in fields like software.{22}

As far as CSD is concerned, apart from the statements in "Caritas in Veritate" discussed in later paragraphs, the Catholic Church has not, until very recently, said much about intellectual property in one sense or another.

The Holy See is a member of the WTO and a signatory of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, as well as of other treaties and conventions in the same field.{23} The Vatican City State adopts, under certain conditions, the Italian Copyright Law.{24} In his intervention to a WIPO meeting in September 2010, that is one year after "Caritas in Veritate," H.E. Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi said, "[a]ccording to article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ‘[e]veryone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.' "{25}

However, in the same statement he also pointed out that "[w]hile strengthening intellectual property rights has potential for enhancing growth and development in the proper circumstances, it might also raise difficult economic and social costs."{26}

CSD in the Encyclicals Before 2009

Modern CSD started in 1891 with the "Rerum Novarum" letter by Pope Leo XIII. In it we find, among many other things, the assertion that private ownership, while necessary, brings to an owner the duty to be a "steward of God's providence, for the benefit of others,"{27} that must make property fruitful and communicate its benefits to others.{28} It seems obvious to me that the same approach described in this statement (and in the one by Pope Paul VI in the next paragraph) should be extended to intellectual property.

Indeed, the already cited statement by H.E. Archbishop Tomasi to the WIPO meeting in 2010 starts by noting that "[t]he raison d'etre of the protection system of intellectual property is the promotion of literary, scientific or artistic production and, generally, of inventive activity for the sake of the ‘common good.'"{29}

In 1967, Pope Paul VI confirmed in "Populorum Progressio" that all people are called to fulfillment and to a sharing in the good things of the Earth and all other considerations in economics must be subordinated to this principle.{30} Pope Benedict XVI later noted that, in the same letter, Paul VI also called real development "the new name for peace," insisting that it must be based on "responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples." {31}

The "Laborem Excercens" letter by Pope John Paul II (1981) includes an acknowledgment of special significance to proposals for "joint ownership of the means of work, sharing by the workers in the management and/or profits of businesses, so-called shareholding by labor, etc." on the grounds that in the Church's teaching, "ownership has never been understood in a way that could constitute grounds for social conflict in labour."{32}

John Paul II also noted that the proper position of labor and the worker in the production process demands various adaptations in the sphere of the right to ownership of the means of production.{33} This "adaptation" is defined as socializing property, which is what happens "when on the basis of his work each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part-owner of the great workbench at which he is working with every one else."{34}

John Paul II went back on this topic in "Centesimus Annus" in 1991, proposing "a society of free work, of enterprise and of participation,"{35} in which "[o]wnership of the means of production, whether in industry or agriculture, is just and legitimate if it serves useful work. It becomes illegitimate, however, when it is not utilized or when it serves to impede the work of others."{36}

In 1987, with "Sollicitudo Rei Socialis," John Paul II had also committed the Church to "the option or love of preference for the poor"{37} and, among other things, called for a reform of technology transfer:

The motivating concern for the poor... must be translated at all levels into concrete actions .... In this respect I wish to mention specifically ... the question of technological exchanges and their proper use ... . Forms of technology and their transfer constitute today one of the major problems of international exchange and of the grave damage deriving therefrom. There are quite frequent cases of developing countries being denied needed forms of technology or sent useless ones.{38}

"Caritas in Veritate"

The "Caritas in Veritate" ("CiV") letter of 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI confirms and continues the same teaching started with "Rerum Novarum."{39} At the same time, its language and the specific topics it covers grant CiV a special place in this paper. To begin with, CiV is the first encyclical to explicitly mention the abuses of intellectual property: "On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care."{40}

Benedict also writes that it is not right to export universal goods like labor and technical knowledge "merely for the sake of obtaining advantageous conditions, or worse, for purposes of exploitation without making a real contribution to local society by helping to bring about a robust productive and social system, an essential factor for stable development."{41}

1. Gift and Cooperation Are Good (Also) for the Economy

In CiV, Benedict makes a very strong point that not just man (for his own true development) and society, but the economy itself, needs to acknowledge the importance of free gift: "The human being is made for gift ... social and political development, if it is to be authentically human, needs to make room for the principle of gratuitousness as an expression of fraternity."{42}

The reason, says Benedict, is that an exclusively binary model of market-plus-State may not offer any more practical direction for the future and may be corrosive of society.{43} Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market may simply be unable to work properly: "[t]he very plurality of institutional forms of business gives rise to a market which is not only more civilized but also more competitive."{44}

Consequently, the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift as an expression of fraternity should find their place within normal economic activity.{45} Giving more space, in a world context, to "forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion" is also required in order to defeat underdevelopment.{46}

2. Education, International Cooperation, and Cultural Interaction

In CiV, Benedict explicitly asks that aid programs increase participation and completion from the grass roots, and that solidarity is practiced at the international level especially by promoting greater access to education.{47}

At the same time, CiV warns against both cultural eclecticism (viewing all cultures as substantially equivalent and interchangeable) and cultural leveling; more specifically, both attitudes are seen as a consequence of separation of culture from human nature that can result in new risks of enslavement and manipulation for humanity.{48}

Globalization

Globalization, says Benedict, reinforces what the Church's social doctrine has always sustained,{49} starting from subsidiarity, which is "particularly well-suited to managing globalization and directing it towards authentic human development."{50} Therefore, a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, is needed.{51}

The Institutional Path

Economic activity can't just happen by itself. It needs both just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics.{52} In CiV, Benedict points out that every Christian is called to practice charity also in this way, that is availing him or herself of the institutions that give structure to the life of society, as taught by CSD. This is the institutional or political path of charity, "no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbour directly."{53}

In practice, says CiV, when it comes to charity every country should guarantee, without prejudice to more traditional activities, suitable juridical and fiscal support and structures also to nterprise models that do not exclude profit, but instead consider it a means for achieving human and social ends.{54} Even the focus of international aid should be on consolidating constitutional, juridical, and administrative systems to achieve the same goals.{55}

New Forms of Engagement

Globalization limits the sovereignty of each State. This fact invites a prudent review and remodeling of the role and powers of public authorities "so as to enable them, perhaps through new forms of engagement, to address the challenges of today's world."{56} This may increase new forms of political participation, nationally and internationally, as well as in citizens' interest and participation in public affairs.{57}

6. Transparency

Benedict hopes that all international agencies and NGOs will commit themselves to complete transparency about their income, programs, and detailed expenditures,{58} to prevent their own internal bureaucracies from consuming - just to perpetuate themselves - an excessively high percentage of funds intended for development.

D. CSD in Other Catholic Documents

The same concepts and requests summarized in the previous paragraphs are of course present also in countless other Catholic documents from individuals and institutions at all levels. I would like to quote, as just one example, this call for transparency in Zambia that is substantially identical to the one in CiV: "Much more strict monitoring of budgetary allocations and actual expenditures on food security measures is essential if progress is to be made in meeting the needs of the people."{59}

Equally relevant are the writings on poverty that describe it as the explicit outcome of "the way we humans have designed the... structures of society."{60} Others write that Catholic teaching on poverty has grown to acknowledge the importance of property for the poor "in multiple senses of land, capital, education, and technological know-how."{61}

At a more official level, I may mention, as just one example, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Almost thirty years ago, the Conference called for new forms of cooperation and partnership because poverty entails a denial of full, active participation in the life of society.{62} In the same occasion, the Conference also said: "[T]he most appropriate and fundamental solutions to poverty will be those that enable people to take control of their own lives."{63} Ten years later, the same Bishops stressed the fact that this is not a "developing countries-only" issue, when they noted that the economy seemed to be leading to three nations living side-by-side inside the U.S.A.: one prospering and producing in a new information age; another wondering whether they will keep their jobs, health insurance, and good schools for their children; and a third wondering whether they can afford the rent, heat, and groceries. {64}

II. NATURE, ROLE, AND SIGNIFICANCE OF SOFTWARE (AND COPYRIGHT)

Let us now look at some technologies and practices that may have, or already have, a deep impact on the topics covered in the first section. Many people still see software as something purely immaterial, somehow detached from the physical world. Reality is deeply different. Even if it were possible, going back to the pre-software age would make no sense; still it is true, in a sense, that software is "eating the world."{65} Software is not a stand-alone industry or set of tools. It is something that makes every other physical or immaterial economic activity work, from agriculture to space travel and to every service from mere bureaucracy to healthcare, education, tourism, and lotteries.

Software performs automatically, in milliseconds, huge quantities of stock market transactions in all sectors of the economy (including pension funds). Modern cars contain so much software that independent technicians have lost, regardless of their skills, their right to repair them because some repairs require software that car companies only give to selected partners. In some countries, software is already destroying more jobs that used to require a university degree than "low level," purely manual ones.

Software, which when properly used can greatly reduce pollution and waste in all fields of human activity, also has a huge, but often unnecessary environmental footprint; dismissing perfectly working computers or smartphones (only because the next fashionable operating system demands more memory) produces thousands of tons of unnecessary toxic waste.

Today everything from phone calls and live T.V. to texts, health records, and engineering designs is encoded in bits read and written through software. Software already has an exclusive mandate to package and access almost every kind of information and communication we need to live.

Among other things, this makes several discussions about copyright and intellectual property moot. Who really controls the right to copy a novel or the diagrams of some invention is not their author: it's the author of the software used to write and save those documents as digital files. If the format of those files were secret and that software became unavailable, copying the files may still be technically possible, but it would be useless.

Without software and digital content (both online and offline) in their own native language, many people (especially poor people) lose the opportunities for real development that computers and the Internet can offer, including those described in the next chapter. India, with its millenary history and hundreds of languages, has been defined as the only country in the world where people are forced to buy fonts, that is the digital versions, of their native alphabets.{66}

Iceland, one of the oldest and most literate nations in Europe, in 1998 was too small of a market to deserve its own version of Windows.{67} In Ethiopia, the lack of both computer interfaces and Google search in Afaan Oromo (the fourth language in Africa by number of native speakers) has been a primary cause of digital divide.{68} Even ignoring languages, a small business owner in an emerging country may technically "pirate" Western accounting software, but in order to use it he should also do business only the Western way, putting aside any other commercial practice or transaction model (e.g., bartering), no matter how relevant it may be culturally and historically in his native community.

Software and digital technologies can also do wonders to preserve local cultures and, as we'll see, improve the life of the poor. Projects like Literacy Bridge{69} used custom recorders as audiobooks to save and distribute traditional songs, tales, and recipes. Today the same activity may be performed with most smartphones.

Summing it up, software can do much both to flatten and preserve (among other things) culture. We may well say that in modern society software is and creates (or destroys) culture. Therefore, assuming that all types of software usage and development models are substantially equivalent for society is very dangerous.{70}

Another consequence to property of doing everything with and through software is this: today, if you do not own or control the software you use (often unwillingly or unknowingly), you don't really own or control much of anything.{71}

For all these reasons — that is, for the actual, if invisible, power it gives to those who write and control it — it has been said that software is legislation. The will to increase the real control on individuals and society that software can give to very few people is behind what writer Cory Doctorow calls the "Coming War on General Computation,"{72} as well as extensions for the digital age of the Human Rights Declaration.{73}

Besides being legislation, software also enforces and sometimes creates intellectual property. When we think of how many design activities and manufacturing processes happen today inside software programs, or under their complete control, we can see that software also is a hugely flexible means of production. As such, it already is within the scope of CSD. Should not this connection be explicitly acknowledged?{74}

III. THE OPENNESS REVOLUTION

Computers (of all sorts, from mainframes to smartphones), the Internet, and software (especially the "FOSS" Software described in the next paragraph) have created many opportunities for cooperation and production in many fields. Just for the sake of brevity and simplicity, in this paper all those opportunities are collectively called "Open," or "Openness Revolution." Some of the most interesting ones are described in the following paragraphs. Before looking at them in more detail, it is proper to point out some of their common characteristics. The first is that none of these activities could exist, on a large scale at least, without computers, FOSS and the Internet (at least as open as it has been until now), which really enables individuals across the world to work together. Secondly, they are all based on a "share-and-share alike" attitude, which is what gives these activities the "Open" qualification.

Third, that attitude is promoted and enforced, not by violating copy- right, but by deliberately using it (through proper licenses) in ways that:

explicitly add gratuitousness, cooperation, and reciprocity to the picture;{75}

enable, and explicitly encourage everybody with the need and the right skills to solve a problem to be active and do it, without permissions from above or complicated procedures;

do not renegade ownership: every active participant continues to own the copyright of his or her contribution to the project, but freely decides to not use that ownership in certain ways, thus remaining, to use the language of "Laborem Excercens" "part-owner of the great workbench at which he is working with everyone else;"{76} and

mitigate some negative (from a CSD point-of-view) aspects or risks of the ownership of means of production, namely those that would, as John Paul II put it "impede the work of others."{77}

Fourth, just because the material and immaterial results of these activities are Open, they contribute to free both individuals and whole societies from "all-or-nothing" choices at the economical, technical, or cultural levels. People are legally free to take only the parts of an Open project that interest them and modify them as they wish until they work as they really need.

Finally, these activities often are not what could provide the most innovative, optimized and profitable results... according to the criteria of current mainstream economy. Equally often, however, their achievements may be not only those most closely matching the real needs of many people, but also the only realistic and most sustainable ones in many contexts.

A. Free/Open Source Software (FOSS)

The acronym FOSS is most commonly used to refer to that huge and very important class of software that is called, depending on who you ask, either "Free" or "Open Source." While the two definitions reflect two distinct, not necessarily overlapping approaches to software, they are combined because they refer to more or less the same corpus of software programs and practices for their development and distribution. "Free Software" is basically an ethical definition. It means software created to be "free as in freedom," not (necessarily) free as in "free beer."

This is software that everybody is explicitly allowed to study, modify, share, and redistribute without paying fees or other restrictions; the only condition is that the same freedoms must be guaranteed to the users of the modified version. Free Software envisions a community of programmers and users that work together towards their common good and the increase of (software) knowledge freely available to everyone.

"Open Source," instead, describes software development done in the same practical ways (collaborative development, software source code freely reusable, etc.), but for purely pragmatic and economical reasons. Open Source is a winning model, for example, if a software program is so complex that one single group could never afford to develop it alone and/or its core business is not selling software products, but software-related services (this includes public administrations). This does not exclude the "Free Software" motivation, but does not need it either.

However it is called, FOSS is not a theoretical proposition: it is what already keeps the current open Internet running. Very popular desktop programs like the OpenOffice/LibreOffice suites or the Firefox browser are FOSS, and so is a significant part of the Android operating system for smartphones.{78}

What is really important in FOSS, in the context of this paper, is one specific consequence of the availability of the source code and of its license: as long as volunteer programmers, or the resources to hire programmers, are available, FOSS is the only software that can always be legally reused, localized, or modified in any way to fit one's real needs, even if its original developer disappears.

B. Open Hardware

Digital integrated circuits ("ICs") are thin slices of silicon enclosed in plastic packages on which thousands or millions of transistors are printed.{79} The actual function of a specific IC is only defined{80} by how those transistors are actually connected to each other (the connections are microscopic strips of metal printed on the IC itself). In other words, depending on the actual number and layout of those connections,{81} ICs built starting from the same basic array of transistors on silicon can become modems, programmable car brake controllers, computer microprocessors, or thousands of other electronic products. Some classes of ICs even allow the user to redefine the connections—that is, what the IC actually is—at every power-up, rather than once-and-for-all at manufacturing time.

Together, ICs and other components, collectively called microelectronics, are what make possible countless products from, missile control systems to smartphones.{82} Recent advances in microelectronic manufacturing have made certain ICs cheap enough that designing them in the same way as FOSS has become both possible and useful for many people worldwide.

This is what is usually called the "Open Hardware" movement, even if the same definition also applies to similar activities for other classes of products. The best example of microelectronics Open Hardware success is the Arduino microcontroller,{83} whose complete starter kit costs seventy-nine Euro.{84} Arduino is already used to build everything from toys to hydroponic control systems and all sorts of remote sensing equipment.{85}

C. 3D Printing

The term 3D printing is the most fashionable name of a process which is more appropriately defined as additive manufacturing.{86} In traditional manufacturing, special machines "extract" an object of the desired shape by removing all the parts in excess from bigger blocks of raw matter. Additive manufacturing works in the opposite way: objects are assembled layer-by-layer, by adding tiny drops of material (usually plastic, at least for cheap and/or hobbyist-level products) one at a time. The 3D printing name comes from the similarity of this process with normal printing, which consists of placing drops of ink on paper. The exact position of each drop is defined by instructions in a digital file.

While 3D printing is not (yet) as efficient and mature as traditional machinery and assembly lines, it also has several characteristics that make it particularly interesting in the CSD context.

The use of 3D printers is perfect for low or very low volume production—the very kind of production that may be appropriate even for (networks of) villages and other small communities in developing countries, with little or no money to invest in machinery. The same 3D printer can produce a different object every time it runs, as long as it is fed with a different design file. This also makes 3D printing perfect to produce on demand spare parts of obsolete products that may not be commercially available.

Several activists and researchers are already studying how to use 3D printing for social and economic development (the usual acronym for this activity is 3D4D), that is to produce in this way objects needed in poor communities worldwide: the winner of the 2012 3D4D Challenge was a design for a one person fishing boat, 3D printed from recycled plastic.{87} Others are studying how to 3D print more efficient photovoltaic panels.{88}

The most interesting part of 3D printing, however, is that just like FOSS, it can be open, collaborative, and affordable: entry level 3D printers can cost as little as one hundred dollars, including models like the RepRap,{89} that is Open Source and able to make copies of itself. Design files for thousands of objects are already freely available online, just like it happens with FOSS, in online communities like Thingiverse.{90}

D. Open Manufacturing and Agriculture

Open, collaborative design and manufacturing is not limited to immaterial or small size products or, more generally, non-primary needs of lucky citizens in the most advanced societies. The Open Source Ecology project is just the first "Network of Farmers, Engineers, and Supporters Building the Global Village Construction Set:" Open Source prototypes, designs and production instructions of fifty machines, from tractors to brick presses, necessary to build "a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts."{91}

Another huge resource of Open technology for development is Appropedia.{92} This community for "collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development" helps to design and build everything, from solar ovens to wind turbines and family toilets, with the smallest possible amount of resources.{93}

Even food production, as requested by "Caritas in Veritate," may benefit from existing Open Source techniques and communities.{94} Small Open Source drones may be used to monitor the status of crops and livestock.{95} Open designs for small hydroponic gardens (including indoor ones that may help bring fresh produce even to urban slums and food deserts), sometimes controlled by Arduino circuits, are also available online.{96}

Even where there is no need (or budget) for such advanced technologies, production of Open Education Resources,{97} like agriculture manuals with Creative Commons licenses, may minimize the costs of disseminating whatever knowledge is needed to sustainably increase the yields of the fields.

E. Open Mapping

Cartography carries political messages, but it can also be an act of social self-affirmation. The Mapping Hacks book says "[m]ap or you will be mapped" because who draws the maps controls how (and if) others see the world.{98} Very often, proprietary online maps are almost useless in developing countries. They show every possible detail of "rich" places, but little or nothing of poor ones because mapping them could never be profitable for a traditional private corporation.

The Gaza Strip is a perfect example of both this problem and its solution. The Strip looks almost empty on Google Maps, but its ambulance drivers quickly reach people in need anyway, thanks to OpenStreetMap, which thousands of volunteers worldwide improve every day.{99} OpenStreetMap also makes it much easier for linguistic minorities to build and preserve state-of-the-art digital representations of their own land, history, and culture, in their own language, with their own symbols.

Other relevant projects that show how open, collaborative mapping helps the poor are Ushuhaidi,{100} which did a great job after the Haiti earthquake,{101} and New Social Cartography of the Amazon.{102} The latter project produces greater knowledge about land grabbing in the Amazon, helping local social movements to combat it.{103}

F. Open Data

Among other things, responsible participation in public affairs{104} requires that all citizens can (both technically and legally) analyze and reuse the raw data produced or used by their public administrations to do their job. This approach to collaborative production, use and sharing of Public Sector Information ("PSI"), called Open Data, is the basis of Open Government and is more than transparency: on the one hand, it explicitly encourages active participation and reuse of data for both civic activism and economic development; on the other hand, it requires that data are published in ways that make it easy to analyze them automatically. The Open Data movement is already active worldwide, and has already produced significant results and practical guidelines. Describing them here would take too much space, so I will refer the reader to my Open Data, Open Society reports to know more.{105} Here, it will be enough to say that Open Data may also help both to free public money to help the poor and the poor themselves to get more control of their lives.

G. Open Knowledge and Education

None of these great opportunities for real human development could do much without the capability to understand and use them independently, that is without access to adequate education. Italian Catholic Priest Don Lorenzo Milani (1923–1967), known as an educator of poor children, wrote that "the factory worker knows one hundred words, the factory owner 1000, that's why the master is the latter."{106}

Former UN Secretary Kofi Annan said "[e]ducation is, quite simply, peace-building by another name. It is the most effective form of defense spending there is." {107} Quality education, both in general and as training in the very fields presented in the previous paragraphs, is essential to give the greatest opportunities to the greatest number of human beings.

Using the Internet, FOSS, and Open Content licenses as Creative Commons,{108} worldwide movements for Open Culture, Open Access to academic research, Open Educational Resources ("OERs"), and Open Education are already trying to fill this need: online communities like Connexions, to name just one example, already produce thousands of reusable courseware modules on many topics.{109} Just like FOSS, this is all content that is legally reusable and adaptable, without paying royalties, to real needs of local cultures and job markets.

Of course, none of these movements, nor distance learning in general, can entirely replace working face-to-face with good teachers. But the problem is that while more education is sorely needed soon, there are not enough good teachers or resources to provide it the old way to all those who need it.

If we keep this sad fact firm in mind, it is hard to ignore that those Open movements may be the only way to make basic education spread fast: "it's not school ... but there is learning."{110}

Thanks to their Open licenses and to the fact that they are almost always already online, OERs also are among the content that is easy to translate and port to basic smartphones. Considering that, in March 2013, the United Nations announced that more people worldwide have mobile phones than toilets, even in developing countries, this is no secondary feature.{111} It would be a pity not to use those phones to spread education.

At the same time, FOSS and Open licenses greatly facilitate the production of educational resources that are usable without the Internet or any electronic device. One slogan of the Open Learning Exchange is "the power of the Web where there is no Web."{112} Almost ten years ago, Uganda farmers without internet access were already studying agriculture manuals on CD-ROMS through Web browsers to reduce their learning curve.{113}

IV. CONCLUSION

A. What is CSD Again?

As the first chapter shows, CSD, starting straight from the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, has always strongly proposed a society built on solidarity, subsidiarity, and common good. Such a society should help the poor by empowering them through government that is small in assistentialism but "big" in fair rules. Through active participation (at all levels, from family to State) and distributed ownership of means of production, that society should serve the real needs{114} of all its members, both at the spiritual and at the practical level.

The concrete challenges that come out of this proposal today are well represented by three questions that the U.S. Bishops asked almost twenty years ago:

How can our Church take a leadership role in calling those in positions of power to promote economic growth, job security, decent wages, and greater opportunities?

How can our community shape the priorities of our culture to promote greater personal responsibility and better economic choices?

How can business, labor, various levels of government, and mediating structures like churches, charities, and voluntary groups work together to overcome economic injustice and exploitation in our communities?{115}

B. What Openness Is

In my opinion, what I have called the "Openness Revolution" should be a necessary, important part of the answer to all the questions above, and a good application of CSD in general. "If development were concerned with merely technical aspects of human life... then the Church would not be entitled to speak on it."{116} But the leading concepts behind all the technologies described in the previous chapter are not technical.

It should be evident from sections two and three that CSD cannot ignore software or the Openness Revolution anymore. Software, as we have seen, produces legislation and culture; therefore, understanding its nature belongs to ethics as much as to technical curricula, and making certain decisions about software is a responsibility that the heads of religious institutions cannot delegate to their Information and Communication Technology staff. Today, respect for the person should include making sure that each person can choose the software he or she really needs.

Besides, CSD has always advocated a just distribution of means of production. Software and knowledge, albeit immaterial, are crucial, strategic means of production. Their just distribution implies (without excluding private initiative and profit) their opening.

Just like CSD, Openness is not, and never can be, a direct endorsement of any single product, brand, company, country, or political system. Openness is, first of all, a way of working and regulating some technologies. All the practices and movements described in the previous section are:

legally and deeply adaptable to very diverse, local, real needs and the common good of all their users without special permissions, at the smallest possible cost;

perfect for decentralization at the lowest possible levels;

driven by, and supportive of, free and spontaneous initiatives, by individuals and communities, and voluntary, participated work, instead of assistentialism from above;

not driven by profit, even if they do not exclude it;

based on means of production that (at least in the immaterial parts) really belong to all their users, thus distributing ownership at a much bigger and more resilient scale, than would have been possible even a few years ago;

usable, and already used, to build tools of peace of all sorts, from tractors to textbooks; and

beneficial even for people without (broadband) internet access.

What about globalization and subsidiarity? Since the times of Paul VI, development in CSD implies active participation of peoples, "on equal terms, in the international economic process."{117} Openness makes this easier, turning globalization, that is access to appropriate knowledge and to the most efficient means of production, to the poor's advantage. In this sense, it seems a bit like globalization done right.

On top of that, it is subsidiarity itself, which I may summarize again as "whenever people can do something by themselves, help them to do so!", that requires and contains Openness. Benedict points out that the new context of international trade and finance limits the sovereignty of States.{118}

This lessening of power of the States puts subsidiarity in danger: no State may delegate powers and tasks that it completely or partially lost due to globalization, international trade treaties and intellectual property abuses.

By encouraging Openness, States can get back some of their power to offer subsidiarity. Besides, promoting Openness reduces unnecessary costs, freeing important resources for more critical tasks, and increases the free circulation of solutions.

Today, Open techniques are often used to build "first world only" gadgets and services. However, they also seem made to order to fight consumerism and help the poor more efficiently, at the smallest possible cost.

Openness already exists and does not require any "extension" or changes to CSD. In a way, we may say that Openness may be used to implement with Information and Communication Technology the orthodox CSD that already exists.

Another way to express the same concept is that, if we had to build from scratch technologies and ways to use them that match CSD point-by-point, the result would be unavoidably very, very similar to what is described in section three. So, why do it from scratch?

The Open Revolution is based on technology, and Paul VI and Benedict XVI rightly warned against "the great danger of entrusting the entire process of development to technology alone."{119}

Indeed, in general, any technology can create new divides, increase exploitation instead of fighting it, or encourage its own idolization. The Open solutions described here, however, do not depend only on the smallest possible number of technocrats as it happens with closed, proprietary systems. By design, they not only enable, but encourage all the people and communities using them to "look under the hood," to take control and modify the "machine" until it really suits them, or to ask for help to do that.

Besides, the proposal here is exactly to acknowledge and use Open technologies and practices as one of the necessary tools to support real human development, never as "saviors" to be idolized.

As far as I am concerned, the Openness Revolution also proves the timelessness and modernity of CSD and, in general, of the message of the Church: it is a bit like CSD had already conceived, decades or centuries ago, solutions so advanced that technology has been able to build the necessary tools only in recent years.

That is why, in my opinion, while Openness is good in and by itself, Catholics have even more reasons than others to promote, teach, and use it. Incidentally, this assertion may be extendable to every religion, belief system, or NGO that proposes subsidiarity, care for the poor, and similar goals (of course, this does not mean the opposite, that is, that one should be Catholic or, for that matter, "support" any established religion, in order to appreciate and practice Openness).

C. In Practice

I started looking at these topics in 2005 when I published the article titled Free Software's Surprising Sympathy with Catholic Doctrine.{120} Its first results were the practical proposals that, in 2006, I and the other cofounders of the Eleutheros Project put in the Eleutheros Manifesto.{121} Those proposals are still valid today and perfectly in line with the thesis of this paper, so my first suggestion is to follow them.

Today, even more than in 2005, Open technologies and practices can do much good for culture, economy, education, and public services. Therefore these days, in my humble opinion, teaching and practice of CSD cannot avoid to include, at all levels, from universities and seminaries to parishes:

education to the real nature and role of software; and

teaching, promotion, and practice of Openness, as presented here.

Does this mean that all clerics (or all Catholics, for that matter) should become hackers or software programmers? Of course not. It just means that they should all be aware of these issues and opportunities, so that, whenever it is appropriate and useful, they can use, teach, and promote them, by themselves or seek assistance from experts.

Footnotes

See An Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching, SECOND SPRING, http://www.secondspring.co.uk/course/termtwo.htm (last visited Oct. 6, 2013) (discussing the distinction between civil, economic, and political levels).

Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate Encyclical Letter on Charity in 12 (2009), available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html#_edn20.

Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus Encyclical Letter on the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum 43 (1991), available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html.

Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 18.

Id. 16–17.

Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church Encyclical Letter to Pope John Paul 351 (2006), available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html.

Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 7.

An incomplete list of such rights may include, in no particular order: food, shelter, education, healthcare, local cultural heritage, sustainable development, and freedom of religion and speech.

See Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris Encyclical Letter on Peace on 58 (1963), available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jxxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html.

Pope John Paul II, supra note 3, 47.

"Web 2.0" is a generic term used to indicate a second generation of the World Wide Web heavily based on social networking and empowering as many Internet users as possible to be active participants and content producers, rather than passive consumers. "Architecture of participation" is listed as one of the core principles in the "Web 2.0 meme map" published by Tim O'Reilly in 2005. See Tim O'Reilly, What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, O'REILLY, http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html (last visited Nov. 20, 2013).

See Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 58.

An Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching, supra note 1, 38.

See Peter J. Henriot, Catholic Social Teaching and Poverty Eradication: Key Concepts and Issues, SOUTHERN AFRICAN REGIONAL POVERTY NETWORK, www.sarpn.org/Country-PovertyPapers/Zambia/Catholic/page3.php (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, supra note 6, 351.

What are Intellectual Property Rights?, WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION, www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel1_e.htm (last visited Oct. 11, 2013).

What is Intellectual Property?, WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANIZATION, www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/ (last visited Oct. 11, 2013).

The Concept of Intellectual Property, WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANIZATION, www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/about-ip/en/iprm/pdf/ch1.pdf (last visited Oct. 11, 2013).

Why is Intellectual Property Important?, EDUCATION IP STREET, http://education.ipstreet.com/home/overview/why-is-intellectual-property-important/ (last visited Oct. 11, 2013).

See, e.g., BRIAN MARTIN, INFORMATION LIBERATION 29–56 (1998). For other popular presentations of the same general position, see Richard M. Stallman, Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage, GNU OPERATING SYSTEM, www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html (last visited Oct. 23, 2013) and Rick Falkvinge, Language Matters: We Can Keep Our Liberties, TORRENTFREAK, http://torrentfreak.com/language-matters-framing-the-copyright-monopoly-so-we-can-keep-our-liberties-130714/ (last visited Oct. 23, 2013).

See Lawrence Lessig, The Public Domain, FOREIGN POLICY, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2005/08/30/the_public_domain (last visited Oct. 23, 2013); The Incredible Shrinking Public Domain, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PUBLIC DOMAIN, http://web.law.duke.vedu/cspd/publicdomainday/2012/shrinking (last visited Oct. 11, 2013).

See Patents, ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION, www.eff.org/patent (last visited Oct. 11, 2013).

See Background Information Note on the Legal Framework for Intellectual Property of the Holy See, WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANIZATION, www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/outline/va.html (last visited Oct. 11, 2013).

See Antonella Barbieri & Dario Morelli, Copyright and the Vatican, THE GLOBAL LEGAL POST (June 27, 2013), www.globallegalpost.com/global-view/copyright-and-the-vatican-41065795/ (discussing the problem of which copyright law applies to the Vatican City State).

H.E. Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Statement at the 48th Series of Meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization's General Assemblies (Sept. 21, 2010) available at http://nunzio-un.blogspot.it/2010/10/statement-by-h.html.

Id.

Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum Encyclical Letter on the Rights and Duties of Capital and 22 (1891), available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html.

See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2404, available at www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a7.htm (last visited Oct. 12, 2013) (explaining the Seventh Commandment as it relates to the universal destination and the private ownership of goods).

H.E. Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, supra note 25.

See Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio Encyclical on the Development of, 22, available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_en.html.

Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 11, 17, 18.

Pope John Paul II, Laborem Excercens Encyclical on Human 14 (1981), available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens_en.html.

See id.

Id.

Pope John Paul II, supra note 3, 35.

Id. 43.

Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis Encyclical Letter for the Twentieth Anniversary of Populorum 42 (1987), available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jpii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis_en.html.

Id. 43.

Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 12.

Id. 22.

Id. 40.

Id. 34.

See id. 39.

Id. 35, 39, 46.

See Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate Encyclical Letter on Charity in 36 (2009), available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html#_edn20.

Id. 39.

See id. 58, 61.

See id. 26. + See id. 39.

Id. 57.

See Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate Encyclical Letter on Charity in 67 (2009), available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html#_edn20.

See id. 37.

Id. 7.

See id. 46-47.

See id. 41.

Id.

See Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Encyclical Letter on Charity in Truth) 24 (2009), available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html#_edn20.

See id. 47.

Peter Henriot, S.J., Governance and Its Impact on Food Security in Zambia, JESUIT CTR. FOR THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION, at 3 (2009), www.jctr.org.zm/index.php?option=com_joomdoc&task=doc_download&gid=90&Itemid=76.

Henriot, supra note 14, at 1.

Fred Kammer, Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and Poverty, JUSTSOUTH Q. 1, 8 (2009), available at www.loyno.edu/jsri/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/CSTandPoverty-Winter2009jsq.pdf.

See U.S. Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, U.S. CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, 188 (1986), http://www.usccb.org/upload/economic_justice_for_all.pdf.

Id.

See United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Inc., A Decade After "Economic Justice for All": Continuing Principles, Changing Context, New Challenges, 3 (1996), http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/global-issues/trade/upload/a-decade-after-economic-justice-for-all-1995-11.pdf.

See Marc Andreessen, Why Software is Eating the World, WALL ST. J., (Aug. 20, 2011), http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.

See APCNews, Bitter-sweet: Mixed Feelings About Working to Indian Language Solutions, ASS'N FOR PROGRESSIVE COMM., http://www.apc.org/en/news/diversity/world/bitter-sweet-mixed-feelings-about-working-indian-l (last visited Feb. 19, 2014).

See Mary Williams Walsh, Iceland Fears Life Without Own Windows Language, THE BALTIMORE SUN, (July 4, 1998), http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1998-07-04/news/1998185007_1_iceland-language-policy-microsoft.

See generally THE MAIL ARCHIVE, http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@l10n.openoffice.org/msg05923.html (last visited Oct. 11, 2013) (presenting emails from Ethiopian programmers to the OpenOffice.org translation mailing list).

See generally LITERACY BRIDGE, www.literacybridge.org (last visited Oct. 11, 2013) (discussing how the program uses the talking book to distribute educational programs to its end user).

Cf. Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 26 (warning against cultural eclecticism and cultural leveling because of the risk of social degradation).

Cf. id. 24 (comparing technology and economics of the past with that of the present).

See Cory Doctorow, The Coming War on General Purpose Computation, BOING BOING (Dec. 27, 2011), http://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html.

See The Hague Declaration, DIGITAL STANDARDS ORGANIZATION, www.digistan.org/hague-declaration:en (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

Cf. Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 34-38 (arguing against a market economy and for a market system where all are able to give and receive).

Quite often, the only condition to be able to take and reuse something Open is that one's contributions and changes are also made available to everybody else who may need them, at the same conditions. Please note that this is just a simplification! In reality, there are several types of Open licenses and several distinctions among use cases that make things more varied. This paragraph only aims to provide a general, approximate overview of how Openness often works.

Pope John Paul II, supra note 32, 14.

Pope John Paul II, supra note 3, 43.

See, e.g., Katherine Noyes, Is Android Open? Not So Much, Study Finds, PCWORLD http://www.pcworld.com/article/246140/is_android_open_not_so_much_study_finds.html (last visited Dec. 13, 2011).

See, e.g., Integrated Circuit Definition, TECHTERMS, www.techterms.com/definition/integratedcircuit (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

This is an approximation, but it is correct enough for the purpose of this paper.

This is what is usually called a circuit diagram.

For nontechnical summaries of the importance, history, and variety of ICs, see Integrated Circuit Background, HOW PRODUCTS ARE MADE, www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Integrated-Circuit.html (last visited Oct. 27, 2013) and Design & Technology: Integrated Circuits, BITESIZE, www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/design/electronics/integratedrev1.shtml (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See ARDUINO, http://arduino.cc/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

As of September 2013, an official starter kit came complete with printed manual, cables, and other components. See Arduino Starter Kit, ARDUINO, http://store.arduino.cc/ww/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=185 (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See Exhibition, ARDUINO, http://playground.arduino.cc/projects/arduinoUsers (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See 3D Printing, WIKIPEDIA, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See A Third-world Dimension: A New Manufacturing Technique Could Help Poor Countries As Well As Rich Ones, THE ECONOMIST, (Nov. 3, 2012), www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21565577-new-manufacturing-technique-could-help-poor-countries-well-rich-ones.

See John J. Licata, How 3D Printing Could Revolutionise the Solar Energy Industry, ENVIRONMENT BLOG (Feb. 22, 2013), www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/feb/22/3d-printing-solar-energy-industry.

See REPRAP, http://reprap.org/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See THINGIVERSE, www.thingiverse.com/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

OPEN SOURCE ECOLOGY, http://opensourceecology.org/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See APPROPEDIA, http://appropedia.org/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

What is Appropedia?, APPROPEDIA, www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:About (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

Cf. Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 27 (discussing the food shortages in poor countries).

See, e.g., Iavor Diatchki, Tech Talk: Chris Anderson on Using Drones in Agriculture, GALOIS (Sept. 12, 2013), http://corp.galois.com/blog/2013/9/12/tech-talk-chris-anderson-on-using-drones-in-agriculture.html (describing a public presentation on agricultural drone use); Chris Anderson, Agricultural UAVs, DIY DRONES, http://diydrones.com/group/agricultural-uavs (last visited Oct. 2, 2013).

See What is GardenBot?, GARDENBOT, http://gardenbot.org/about/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013); ROBOTGARDENER, http://robotgardener.com/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

For a discussion of Open Educational Resources, see Open Knowledge and Education, infra pp 119–121.

Press Release, Secretary-General, In Address to ‘Learning Never Ends' Colloquium, Calls Education Investment Which Yields Highest Profit, U.N. Press Release SG/SM/7125 (Sept. 10, 1999), available at http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/19990910.sgsm7125.doc.html.

See OPENSTREETMAP, http://openstreetmap.org/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See USHAHIDI, www.ushahidi.com/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See generally, Patrick Philippe Meier, Haiti and the Power of Crowdsourcing, USHAHIDI, http://blog.ushahidi.com/2012/01/12/haiti-and-the-power-of-crowdsourcing/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013) (describing how Open mapping helped find earthquake victims in the rubble).

See NOVA CARTOGRAFIA SOCIAL DA AMAZONIA, www.novacartografiasocial.com/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See Thiago Borges, New Social Cartography of Amazon Protecting Indigenous, INFOSURHOY, http://infosurhoy.com/cocoon/saii/xhtml/en_GB/features/saii/features/main/2011/10/04/feature-02 (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 24.

See Marco Fioretti, Open Data, Open Society, STOP, http://stop.zona-m.net/2011/01/the-open-data-open-society-report-2/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013). For the follow-up report, see Marco Fioretti, Open Data: Emerging trends, issues and best practices, http://stop.zona-m.net/2011/09/open-data-emerging-trends-issues-and-best-practices/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

The original Italian version of that sentence is "l'operaio conosce 100 parole, il padrone 1000, per questo è lui il padrone." That sentence is attributed as is to don Milani in countless Italian articles, papers, books, and conferences presentations. While there is no doubt at all in Italy that it is authentic, it seems that this is a condensed version that don Milani only put in writing on a wall of his school in Barbiana, Tuscany about fifty years ago. The same concept was expressed in his 1958 book "Esperienze Pastorali." See generally Monsignor L. Adami, La Cura Delle Relazioni in Don L. Milani, http://www.magverona.it/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/master-2010_01_dispensa-ADAMI.pdf (last visited Oct. 27, 2013) (discussing Milani's 1958 book entitled Esperienze Pastorali).

See, e.g., Karin Ronnow, Education Builds Peace and Prosperity; It's That Simple, CENTRAL ASIA INSTITUTE, https://www.ikat.org/2013/03/29/march-29-2013-education-builds-peace-and-prosperity-its-that-simple/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013) (discussing a Pinterest webpage that supposedly quotes the book Interventions: A Life in War and Peace by Kofi Annan and Nader Mousavizadeh).

See CREATIVE COMMONS, http://creativecommons.org/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See CONNEXIONS, http://cnx.org/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

Ken Ronkowitz, The Open Everything Movement, SERENDIPITY35 (Jan. 16, 2008), http://www.serendipity35.net/index.php?/archives/497-The-Open-Everything-Movement.html.

See Deputy UN Chief Calls for Urgent Action to Tackle Global Sanitation Crisis, UN NEWS CENTRE, www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=44452&Cr=sanitation#.UYYW8KovBMA (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

OPEN LEARNING EXCHANGE, http://ole.org/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

See Joyce Kyeyune, Ugandan Mozilla Highlights Power of OSS Translation, LINUX PLANET, www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/interviews/5567/1/ (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).

Cf. Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 7 (discussing the "common good" and doing what is best "for the people who belong to the social community").

See U.S. Catholic Bishops, supra note 62, 19.

Pope Benedict XVI, supra note 2, 16.

Id. 21.

See id. 24.

Id. 14.

See Marco Fioretti, Free Software's Surprising Sympathy with Catholic Doctrine, LINUX, http://archive09.linux.com/feature/49533 (last visited Oct. 27, 2013).