FROM PLATFORMS TO PROTOCOLS, FORGES, STACKS AND DAOS: ON THE PLATFORMISATION AND DEPLATFORMISATION OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

This paper contributes to the critical study of platformisation and deplatformisation of software development and how networked infrastructures commodify, configure and challenge relations between code, coders, communities, technologies, investors and industries. It explores the political economic and cultural dimensions of the platformisation of software development in the news industry with a case study on Github. It then examines how resistance to platformisation and counter-mobilisations in the context of free software, art and activism surface alternative arrangements for socialising software development imbued with other logics. The paper proposes the concept of “connective coding” to characterise GitHub’s dominant modes of configuration and capitalisation of public repositories and profiles and the power relations that underpin it, whereby public software and project development work becomes assets in the platform economy that have the potential to be variously capitalised by the platform and its associated third-party ecosystem. This institutional perspective is complemented by an analysis of newsroom industry practices mediated by the platform and how GitHub modulates visibility in this space. The second part of the paper reflects on efforts to deplatformise software development by examining various responses and counter-mobilisations partly prompted by Microsoft’s controversial purchase of Github. It reviews the development of alternative coding spaces such as Gogs, Gitea, Radicle and Forgejo, and the values, practices, concerns and communities associated with them. In doing so it contributes to conference themes pertaining to political economy, labour and resistance in digital industries.