The Basement Interviews by Richard Poynder

"Indeed, I felt that they looked set to exemplify the old adage that the sum of some phenomena is always greater than the constituent parts. But if that was right, I wondered, what was the sum in this case?

"I was also intrigued as to why they were emerging now. For while it was apparent that these movements — including Open Source and Free software, Creative Commons, Free Culture, Open Access, Open Content, Public Knowledge, Open Data, Open Source Politics, Open Source Biology, and Open Source Journalism etc. — all owed a great debt to the development of the Internet, it was not clear to me that the network was the only driver.

"The genesis of the Free Software Movement, for instance, could be said to lie in the specific culture of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT in the 1970s, rather than the Internet. And at that time software programs were still generally written as part of large-scale centralised projects, and distributed on floppy disks or tapes. So I suspected that the Internet was not a sufficient explanation on its own.

"Additionally, I was curious about the individuals who had founded these movements: What had motivated them? Why did they feel so passionate about the cause that they had adopted? What did they think the various movements had in common (if anything) with one another? What was the big picture?

"All in all, it seemed to me to be good material for a book; a book that I envisaged would consist primarily of a series of Q&A interviews with the key architects and advocates of what I had come to call the Free Knowledge movement — people like John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, Michael Hart, Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, Jay Rosen, Lawrence Lessig, Joe Trippi, Harold Varmus, Vitek Tracz, Stevan Harnad, Paul Ginsparg, Cory Doctorow, Yochai Benkler, Richard Jefferson, Michel Bauwens etc.

"I eventually started publishing the interviews on my blog, as The Basement Interviews. And much to my pleasure I began to receive positive feedback almost immediately. I also felt the big picture was beginning to emerge, although the project remains ongoing for now.

"Many of those who have contacted me have urged me to seek out a publisher. A publisher, they insist, would be able to market the interviews in ways that — whatever the advantages of self-publishing on the Web — I was not able to do. Besides, they added, it would be great to have access to a print copy of the collected interviews.

"Others were less sure. As one reader who emailed me put it, "Now the interviews are in the blogosphere they will surely find their own audience."

"What do you think? I'd be interested to hear. I'd also be interested for suggestions as to who is missing from my list of interviewees. Who else, that is, do you think of as a key architect or advocate for the Free Knowledge movement that has not been mentioned here? I can be contacted at richard.poynder@btinternet.com

"Further details about The Basement Interviews can be accessed here

"The interviews thus far can be read by clicking on the links below:"

     1. Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg
     2. Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement
     3. Eric Raymond, a co-founder of the Open Source Initiative
     4. Jay Rosen, a leading proponent of Open Source journalism
     5. Lawrence Lessig, the founder of the Free Culture movement
     6. Cory Doctorow, a cyber activist and specialist in copyright and digital rights management
     7. Vitek Tracz, the first Open Access publisher
     8. Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate, a co-founder of the Public Library of Science, a former director of the US National Institutes of Health and now one of the co-chairs of the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in the Obama administration.
     9. Richard Jefferson, the leading advocate for the Biological Open Source Movement
    10. Stevan Harnad, the self-styled archivangelist
    11. Peter Suber, the de facto leader of the Open Access movement
    12. Michel Bauwens, the creator of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives

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Richard Poynder writes about information technology, telecommunications, and intellectual property. In particular, he specialises in online services; electronic information systems; the Internet; Open Access; e-Science and e-Research; cyberinfrastructure; digital rights management; Creative Commons; Open Source Software; Free Software; copyright; patents, and patent information.

Richard Poynder has contributed to a wide range of specialist, national and international publications, and edited and co-authored two books: Hidden Value and Caught in a Web, Intellectual Property in Cyberspace. He has also contributed to radio programmes.