---
title: When Free Software Isn't Better
lanyrd_url: http://lanyrd.com/2014/seagl/sdfggr/
beginning: 2014-10-25T15:00-07:00
end: 2014-10-25T15:50-07:00
resources:
  audio_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lps72U9-tcw
presenters:
- name: Benjamin Mako Hill
  lanyrd_url: http://lanyrd.com/profile/mako/
---

Despite the rhetoric, free software isn't always better than proprietary software and it isn't always particularly collaborative. Indeed, social science has shown that most free software projects are small and and the work of a single hacker. In this talk, I will walk through some of the academic research on FLOSS, and explain why free software "failures" are not something we need to be ashamed of or to hide and are something that we -- as a community -- can address and work toward!
