rose white's session at this year's 24C3 addressed proprietary versus open knitting, knowledge-sharing and innovation by showing that through history, "guerilla knitting" was actually a subversive craft. in her words, "for decades there have been knitters and other textile artists who are at least as punk rock as today's needle-wielders".

the history of guerilla knitting parallels the rise of industrial production and industry's attempts to standardize and codify knitting patterns. white also shares the story of elizabeth zimmerman who, after being commissioned by a company to design a sweater, had her work re-written in proprietary language. zimmerman then started her own projects to invite knitters to innovate and design for themselves, rejecting the standard industry methods in favor of new experimental designs. sound familiar? today there's an enormous knitting blogging community committed to free liber open source knitting (flosk?).

no matter what the medium, artists, knitters, hackers, or whatever, who engage in information production deserve the rights to innovate freely. go knit hackers of the world, unite!