Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Methods Useful Way Beyond Software
Tom Steinberg writes "Former head of policy at the British Prime Minister's office, Geoff Mulgan, has co-authored a paper on uses of Open Source methods in arenas far beyond the normal Sourceforge universe. The paper is jointly written with Tom Steinberg, head of UK civic hacking fraternity mySociety and explores the use of open source methods to improve academic peer review, drafting of legislation and even media regulation."
Isn't the law already open source? Sure, there are maintainers, but it's possible to submit changes and get them approved.
I am thinking about open sourcing my sex life.
The open source method is not a unique concept. It's based on the concept of free and open collaboration, such as in most science disciplines!
To fork the government.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
One problem with an Open Source approach to modifying academic papers, is that the original author has a strong interest in maintaining sole authorship : for better or worse, their future appointments pretty much depend on publication history.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
...UK civic hacking fraternity...
Can anyone say Lambda Lambda Lambda?
If you take the cases of Linux or Wikipedia, arguably two of the most popular "open source" products, there are far more users that contributors.
Human nature is such that we try to do the least amount of work to achieve maximum effect. Humans are essentially greedy.
Open source model does nto work well with this inherent greediness. IF one day we humans change our intrinsic nature, open source model might well replace the current individualist/capitalist model.
Iran captures three CIA agents
you have bitKeeper installed on your peenix.
People produce better work when they collaborate instead of keeping secrets? Preposterous!
Because we all know that professors, lawyers, and, um, more lawyers, are all interested in getting ideas from outside sources.
With the exception of math/science/engineering academicians, none of the above have any real interest in improving the peer review process.
One of the reason Open Source works so well for software development is possible to release a project when some core funtionality is deemed useful, even though other areas are broken and incomplete. Over time it can be incrementally improved and become quite good.
This model does not work for production of things that must be "complete" on some schedule. We can't pass laws and just release a TODO file along with each law to indicate how we hope it will be changed after it is passed.
Just because Open Source works well in some areas does not mean that it is a good idea for everything.
...when reports on Open Source are no longer in pdf format.
and they want their 'synergy' back.
normal(adj)- people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots [DECS]
a lot like open source. And has been so for quite some time. I publish my results, stating what I have been doing and precisely how. If I can as many other people as possible to use my results and ideas, I will gain respect in the scientific community (a lot of references). Regarding the publication process, open archives such as arxiv have been gaining in popularity for a long time, see e.g. http://arxiv.org/show_monthly_submissions
I didn't think collaboration would be helpful. What is this world coming to? Damn bastards think they're so smart. Next thing you know MIT students will be submitting fake papers to fake conferences. The gall.
i can see it now in a few years
press release:
labour government heralds a new era of common sense
Didn't they try to sort of do this by applying futures market techniques to predicting terrorist events, but it got shut down because the vast number of total and complete dumbfuck shithead level 100 morons in the world (including many here on Slashdot) thought there was going to be *actual* wagering of money?
Great idea.. apply open source methods to non-software organizations, and now Microsoft will go around trying to run hospitals and public schools out of business.
slashdot!=valid HTML
the word is fork.
I said pretty much the same thing in a comment over at Technocrat.
I've said for quite a while now that the technologies used by geeks would have a great effect outside of its original problem domain. Things like Usenet for political parties, Slash for newspapers, comments and trackbacks for magazines, Bugzilla for legislation, Jabber for customer support, etc.
People say geeks are lacking in social skills, but I believe there are significant advances in scaling communication between individuals and communities up to address the problems of huge numbers of people, who all need to get information or express an opinion.
I decided to outsource the mowing of my lawn. Now I have several geeks living in my garage using up all my bandwidth. They drink a fucking lot of Dr. Pepper too.
I have to admit my lawn looks great, but for some reason they keep trying to mow my Xbox. I really don't understand why.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
This reminds me of an old car commercial I saw (I think it was BMW). An older German engineer was being interviewed and he said "we developed and patented crumple zones" then some one else said but all cars have them now. His reply was "We never enforced the patent, some things are too important not to share,"
What inventions do slashdoters think are too important not to share?
Also, a tangent, I think an online wikpidia like open cooking database would be a cool project.
We are the Borg...
So, a document about Open Sourcing society is only available as a PDF and must be purchased. Did someone miss posting this last April 1st?
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
I am making a video documentary, which will be licensed as Creative Commons. I hope that when I finish it, it will serve as an inducement to other people (leftists) to take it and improve upon it. A collaboration of people working over the internet, using OSS procedures and OSS collaboration software, could possibly improve upon it so much that it could be much better than most documentaries shown on broadcast or cable tv.
It is possible to do that. Remember that the script and video and audio footage, along with the editing, are major parts of any documentary. And these aspects of a documentary could easily be improved by collaboration. Of course, because the footage--even in the improved version--would likely consist of older public domain footage obtained downloaded over the net, along with semi-amateur video interviews, the look of the finished product would not be as good as you get over cable tv, DVD, or even or over broadcast. However, once the finished documentary is released for downloading, the viewers would not expect that much anyway.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
These "open source [$random]" idiots need a clue. Scientific collaboration takes what's useful and tosses out what has proven to be useless. If your work is in order, it will be incorporated into collective knowledge...
We've been doing that for... 500 years. Maybe as long as history itself?
Laws are for people with no friends.
Humans are naturally selfish, yes, but this does not necessarily conflict with free software. Adam Smith pointed out that society is driven by selfishness but still creates large mutually-beneficial collaborations.
Free software is easily misunderstood, even by those who participate. Really, it's not about altruism at all.
When I explain free software to non-technical people I compare it to a sport. Think of a game, in which the players compete to design the most creative and useful inventions, using software as their medium. The players keep score in terms of "kudos" and the best players - the key people (almost always men) behind winning projects - have a very high status, much like stars in any field.
Software is an excellent medium because the costs of entry and of collaboration are so low. It enables a true meritocracy in which teams of any size can join together to attack problems of any size (and share kudos, if they succeed).
Free software is not altruistic. Every player knows that if they hit it big, they will have a valuable consultancy job, book deal, conference gigs, or other lucrative opportunity. The best players sublimate this motivation so they can focus on the "pure play" but that does not mean they don't have the motivation, ultimately. Try getting the best players to join your project and you start to see. It's very much "sports for smart people", and every player is very aware of their value.
The Game is becoming politically sensitive because it has a side-product, namely a cornucopia of increasingly valuable software. This flood of cheap software has started to revolutionise the world and launched some major proxy wars between established players, threatened by it, and those who understand what's happening and want to profit from it. You can almost slice the IT industry into two halves: those who hate the Game, and those on the side-lines, cheering and throwing roses. The amounts of money involved are huge - despite the 'free' label - and already influencing global politics.
Can the Game move into other areas? Yes, in two ways. First, it's always been there. Competitive intellectual effort is what has filled the libraries over the ages. Nothing new here except the scale and speed of the process, on the back of cheap global internet communications. Secondly, more and more traditional intellectual processes become software. Look at Wikipedia. The Game can be played with any process that can be held as "source code".
Free software/open source is not a "model" that can be applied elsewhere... but it is a paradigm (I hate that word, but it's accurate here) that changes the way professionals work. Stop being an employee, become a player. For businesses, sponsoring open source projects can be a cheaper and more reliable way to get essential software than traditional projects.
There is no conflict between free software and capitalism. Indeed, free software expresses the "liberal" ideal of free trade with minimal government intervention. People do things for self-interest but economics is not a zero-sum game. Free software is highly capitalistic, depending the individual's capital of ideas and skills.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
OpenSource, FreeSoftware (I know, there are differences, ...) or whatever are just names we give to the act/task/idea of applying a well known set of ideologies into the world of software.
OpenSource it is NOT about the invention of "collaboration", "voluntarism" or anything. All these ideas existed long before the first line of OSS code was written. So you can't "apply OpenSource" on something that is not Source Code, because it would just be "sharing" or some other name anyone might invent to the act/task/idea of applying the concept of publicy sharing knowledge to a specific area of human knowledge.
Bearded MIT nerds were NOT the fisrt human beings to share knowledge with others, and NOT the first to talk about the need to share stuff in some special occasions.
Ex: "Alpinism" is the "-ism" for climbing a mountain (not necessarily in the Alps). It's just a name that gives a special meaning to an obvious task, in this case, climbing something. Am I an Alpinist if I climb a tree? Hell no. Different application, different name.
This is really quite an eye-opening survey of the broad and already-demonstrated applicability of "open source" principles beyond the domain of software. There's something very stirring and promising about the potential of things like Ohmynews , PledgeBank and TheyWorkForYou. This is about us and what *we* can do.
Two heads are better than one.
There are already too many "nice plan, shame nothing ever happens" type projects on sourceforge...
Open Source means open SOURCE CODE... come up with a different term for Open Ideas. Perhaps Open Ideas... Open Source when used for anything other than source code is a poor bastardization of the term.
I'm glad when the airplane was invented the term air didn't become so popular that cars, boats, televisions all had to have the word air in them.
Does anybody really think that would be improvement?
Governments fall at the will of the people (ideally). Are there emerging governments that have considered making a constitution based on OSS?
Open source principles applied to our current political system (democracy, republic) would translate to something like Participatory or Direct democracy. A system where everyone can contribute.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2005/ 02/hugh_pimps_a_ta.html/
Hilarious comeback from youngerpants :-)
... quite literally.
There is also a serious side to this though, in that the government should definitely be forkable.
In a more sane world, the government would be no more than our servants (real servants, not in name only), doing the boring administration work that we decide needs doing, instead of them being our masters and implementing their own agendas as it is today.
In that setting, when one set of administrators is doing a crappy job, you just "fork" another bunch, maybe even several sets of them at the same time, just like you might get in more than one bunch of contract workmen on some project.
All governments need a good forking
jesus christ. i have to say, this is quite possibly the best day of slashdot news ever (and ive been too busy to read most of the day - its 17:47 here).
microsoft to support linux in virtual server
major euro politician to stand against software patents
india to scrap software patents
torvalds finishes new versioning system
dvd players being able to skip those bloody adverts
best...day...(in technology news)....ever
socialism and democracy.
"I think the "Open Source" model can be extended to all aspects of society."
I think it can only be extended to aspects of society where changes, copying or duplication are trivial and essentially without cost. i.e. information.
Deleted
Hmm... interesting idea; people always bash the politicians, but bureaucracy is where the power is really wielded. Why not privatize bureaucracy, but insist that all work done by it be open source?
Sorry to be a spelling nazi but it's stronger than me!
Also, "synonyms", "amounts", "government", "its" (again).
Hey, these are all hard words and I used to be a lousy speller too. Practice makes perfect.
It's also worth pointing out that the article itself is free as in beer, but not free as in speech. They published it under their own modified version of the CC attribution/no-derivatives/noncommercial license, with some onerous restrictions tacked on (e.g., if you distribute it, you have to notify them and send them a copy).
Find free books.
...from Extreme Programming. Our company is developing a surgical device and the CTO is a bit of a geek. Once our senior software developer explained how he works using XP, the CTO now likes using the term to describe how we're all sposed to work on a higher level.
I think we need a variation on XP for management types to express how we should all be getting lots of little things done quickly with lots of feedback and peer review (can anyone say Bazaar Management?)
It would be pretty bloody. Imagine all of the zealots turning every debate into a flamewar? "Should we abolish the death penalty" would never get answered cuz everyone invovled would have killed each other in a week! Then add in all the lamers barging in on cabinet sessions yelling "First Post!".
I think the problem is that allot of us are used to dealing with paradigms in the physical world. If you have a house, car, food, etc ... and let everybody use it - that will deprive you of its use for yourself and your beliefs and opinions of how things should be used and done. But in the world of inventions and creation - that logic is just the opposite, sharing deprives you of nothing but rather increases your value as more people seek you out for applications that have physical world value. All to often it is all to tempting to revert back to physical world paradigms when dealing with information, inventions, and ideas, and the government encourages it with artificial monopolies like copyright and patent. But on average in the big picture controlling information limits your options ... especially if you are the "little guy", small business, starting musician, or independent inventor.
The germans did develop crumple zones. However that was so long ago that even if they did patent them (I'm not sure), the patent would have expired long ago.
The interesting thing about open source is that people can claim that open source is the freeloader's dream while others can claim that it promotes an unprecedented sense of community.
In either case, open source turns on its head some deeply entrenched institutions. For example, in closed-source companies, a college degree is generally a good help to getting a job. However, companies that use open source highly value experience (especially on open source projects) and skill and there is little acceptance for the average programmer.
Right now, I'm graduating college with a CS degree and see many school friends involved in UNIX struggling to find a job. Why? Too much time taking all the credits at college to spend working on FOSS projects that interest them. Those in Windows development (like myself) are doing OK for now...of course I'm very open to changes that may occur and keeping current with FOSS trends.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
From the document: "Open source is, by definition, about source code. Nothing else except computer programs actually has source code to be made freely available, and in a strict sense nothing except computer code can ever be open source."
This is a very short-sighted view. Some counter-examples are VHDL and Verilog chip designs and the G-code that controls machine tools. As time goes on more types of abstract intellectual property will become concrete in code. I can easily imagine a company of the not-to-distant future conducting its entire business through a formal specification so that "running the company" amounts to maintaining the business code. This is why it is so important to get open-source principles on a sound footing now, while the stakes are relatively low.
Wired had a cover article about "Open Source Everywhere" in Nov 2003.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Often, social changes come from thought patterns from other sources being implanted into a culture.
Think of how you get an idea: in general it usually happens by recognizing some type of structure or pattern that you have studied and applying it to a different structure. The open source concept is a revolution of thought. It is evidenced in the 'movement.' This revolution of thought extends far beyond software. I would speculate that the source is outside of 'open source.'
So you recognize the benefits of an 'open source' structure and it gets applied to other things besides software. It gets applied to biology, information, etc. But it has its problems. Some have pointed out the problems of governing in this way. What do you do when two parties disagree? Fork. So now we have two sets of laws?
Perhaps this is the soft, exposed underbelly. It is what some folks propose is wrong with Linux (i.e. no standards) it is what the new Pope says is wrong with Christianity (If you don't like the strict Catholic conventions so you make up your own.)
Figure out how to solve this problem with out a politburo or dictator and we win.
'C' is also for "conciousness raising" a several decade old tradition which has led to feminst theory and practice. It's worked for naming problems like sexual harassment, marital rape, racism, sexism, ismism, and never ceases to come up with new problems. Sometimes it leads to solutions, sometimes it's more difficult - but the point is open sourcing code is a lot like sitting around having tea and chocolate and talking about your problems. It really is. Once people start working together problems/bugs become manageable and real improvements become possible.
Bring on the sunshine and rainbows.
One of the main barriers to inovation
in many industries is the proprietary nature
of techinical/engineering information, which
is locked up in the corporate property system.
If such information were to be liberated and
become the property of its developers they would
no doubt imitate the OSFS movement. Once the
freedom to use and modify engineering design is
established, a revolution in innovation would
occur. Imagine "open sourcing" the engineering
data for automobiles, and all manufactured goods!
I personally have the same problem with the Christian Right trying to force their system upon us. I mean have you actually read in the Bible the Ten Commandments. The tenth commandment says:
So does this mean that his house is more important than his wife, and his slaves?
I generally think that we should to be open minded about all ideas, but some ideas we have found to be immoral even though they are in the Bible.
Actually Communism might have actually worked if it was implemented with actual Domocracy as its backbone. With everyone able to be in a position of authority if they wanted it, not just those that are loyal believers in The Party. Isn't it interesting that the Republicans right now are trying to take complete control of the country, sort of the way Communists took control of other countries...
I will just let you ponder on that for a while.
That will never work! Do you remember what happened when the South forked from the Union?
its a bad thing (tm) cause, its GIVING TOO MUCH CREDIT to jc. Causing people to miss the point...
someone points at the moon and you look at the end of their finger.
I'm doing my part to change the World. Open Sourcing my corrected LN2000 engine is just the beginning. http://www.newpath4.com/NNINDEX/nnindex.htm . We don't need no stinkin' OPEC Oil. The future of Mankind will come from clean energy, not some subterranean tar pit. Our Future isn't in the ground, nor inside a nuclear waste dump of a country, world.
That works way too well.
Way, way too well.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I think his point was that jms could say what he wanted to in a much more eloquent way.
But, hey, those words are tainted. They have dork all over them. Best to distance oneself. Isn't that right?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca