Opening the Sources of Accountability

Abstract:     
This paper scrutinizes the concept of accountability in light of free and open source software. On the view that increasing accountability grants value to society by motivating those most likely and able to prevent risk and harm to do so, I argue that developing software collaboratively, licensing it openly, and distributing its source code freely are promising first steps in the long journey to rehabilitate accountability in our highly computerized society, and that at the same time these practices change our very understanding of what accountability is. The paper analyzes the concept of accountability in an open environment and explores the implications in two mission-critical application fields in which software plays a significant role: electronic voting, and electronic medical records. It further considers the potential remedies to accountability's erosion that free and open source software offer, and the ways in which accountability can be generalized to collective action if we understand it less as punishability and more as a culture that encourages the prevention of risk and harm. With such reconceptualized accountability in mind, I find that code visibility, a self-imposed standard of care and sensible licensing arrangements are a potent, practical, and effective alternative to the strict liability standards offered as a solution to the accountability problem by earlier scholars.

Keywords: accountability, liability, software legal aspects, software norms, free and open source software, software

JEL Classifications: A13, I12, K49, O34, P16

Accepted Paper Series