12. Opening Network Infrastructures

This chapter examines how the politics of openness is enacted through grassroots infrastructuring practices, focusing on community networks and, in particular, the Italian case of Ninux.org. Drawing on science and technology studies and infrastructure studies, it conceptualises openness not as a fixed normative property but as a situated sociomaterial achievement, continuously negotiated through governance arrangements, technical choices, and practices of maintenance and care. The chapter first traces the genealogy of community networks as infrastructures rooted in countercultural computing, digital commons, and decentralised communication. It then analyses how openness is performed in practice through participatory governance, the circulation of technical expertise, and the material work of building and maintaining wireless infrastructures. By showing how antennas, free/libre open-source software, and collaborative practices actively shape political participation and collective responsibility, the chapter argues that community networks function as prefigurative infrastructures that reconfigure digital connectivity as a shared civic resource. In doing so, it contributes to a relational and processual understanding of openness within contemporary digital infrastructures.