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."

Comments

In a democracy/republic

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the law already open source? Sure, there are maintainers, but it's possible to submit changes and get them approved.

Re:In a democracy/republic

[$1uck]

Go to your court house and ask for a copy of building codes (for wiring your house etc). Don't be suprised to find that codes (laws actually) are owned/copyrighted by a firm. So no the laws are not "open source."

Re:In a democracy/republic

[Frabcus]

The problem in the UK is that there is no freely available version of consolidated legislation. You can get the acts from the parliament website, but they are just patch files written in English. There is no free version with the patches applied. And it goes back centuries, a real mess.

Re:In a democracy/republic

[Donny Smith]

>Sure, there are maintainers, but it's possible to submit changes and get them approved.

True, but they have a proprietary CVS repository so the community can't submit their patches using non-proprietary tools.

It'd be nice if someone did a "shadow CVS" of government decisions, laws, etc. vs what should have been done and then critique would be very easy to document in real time with snapshots of this shadow CVS tree :-)

In all seriousness, closed source software, patents, etc. is nothing compared to the wasteful and corupt ways of the government.

Re:In a democracy/republic

[Cyno]

Yeah, but at this current rate of progress we'll patch as security holes and known bugs by sometime around 2370.

Re:In a democracy/republic

[M. Piedlourd]

Huh? In the U.S., building, zoning, subdivision, and other regulatory codes are written and enforced at the municipal or county level with some general rules dictated by state statutes. One wouldn't go to a courthouse to get them, but to City Hall, and there would be no copyright as they are a regulatory code. Perhaps parent is referring to a codifier (who compiles and publishes codes, ordinances, etc) who can copyright the presentation or codification, but not the laws themselves (cf. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc.)!

Re:In a democracy/republic

[quarkscat]

Not, apparently, in the democratic repubic of the USA. No legislator actually read the USA Patriot Act (I) before voting for it -- it came directly from the neo-con (oxymoron warning) think tanks (oxymoron warning) where it quietly evolved for nearly two decades. Not unlike many of the other Dubya rantings, like the Social Security "crisis". The neo-con (oxymoron warning) agenda doesn't make much economic sense, at least from Dubya's lips, since the context this "agenda" has been pulled from doesn't actually match the reality on the ground. Just like the Iraqi WMD the USA went to war over.

Now do you get it?

Re:In a democracy/republic

[$1uck]

Um often is the case where codes are created/published by a corporation and the city/state government legislative body votes to adopt said published codes as law. Then comes the problem who owns it? is it copy-righted? So the law is then copyrighted.

Re:In a democracy/republic

[Vitriol Angst]

I think that a Moderation system should be used in electing Judges.

Currently, I am a bit perplexed when I go to vote, and I see a Judge with an "R" or a "D" after the name. I don't understand the need for a party affiliation for what SHOULD BE, an independent branch of government. We just look at how Bush is stuffing the judge positions with loyalists to see the importance of non-partisan judges. Also perplexing is that I am voting for a judge, since I would really have no way of knowing one judge from another (I don't get to even see policies enacted).

So I would like to see some state take a stab at having lawyers vote in their judges--votes would have to be counted only up to the lower score of Prosecutors and Defendants (eliminating, say judges who are only popular with Prosecutors or vice versa). That gives an element of peer review, which I think works quite well in other professions (OK, better than all the really awful ways we have of deciding power) .

Re:In a democracy/republic

[gr0kCalvin]

David Brin has an extremely interesting book out called "The Transparent Society". He applies the concept of openness to all areas of life and society; arguing that accountability is absolutely necessary for freedom. The makes a whole lot of sense...the rejection of "security through obscurity", in favor of open and peer review. PGP is a good example of a secure system (well, pretty secure) that still works even if everyone knows exactly how it works. Our current democracy is also a good example of an open system. Even though our system isn't perfect (perfection doesn't exist), the feedback of accountability makes it work pretty well. My mom taught me to be honest (and to share), so I'd have to agree with him.

Re:In a democracy/republic

[jesterzog]

Isn't the law already open source? Sure, there are maintainers, but it's possible to submit changes and get them approved.

I can't speak for the US, but in New Zealand (where I'm from), certain segments of our law aren't open. It's the distribution that's the issue, because they're sometimes covered by someone else's copyright.

Our rode code is a good example. It's credited in law as being the authoritative road rules, and to a certain extent there's a public and open process to writing and amending it. But the official rode code, itself (including all of the official wording), is printed by a particular publishing company that owns the copyright.

You can buy it for a reasonable price, you can probably go and view it in a display cabinet somewhere in a government cellar, and I think it's now also available on the web. But you can't simply reproduce and redistribute the official source a-la most typical open source software licences.

Re:In a democracy/republic

[p3d0]

Besides the objections named in another reply, there's also the fact that copyright and open-source are very much compatible. In fact, the GPL relies entirely on copyright.

Re:In a democracy/republic

[$1uck]

Well we weren't really discussing open-source at that point. We were discussing the fact that laws were (and are copy righted) by people not willing to share them. I guess ultimately we could say "open source" laws are bad because it implies someone owns the copy right to the law. Laws should be by necessity's sake public domain. This isn't always the case.

Re:In a democracy/republic

[p3d0]

Yep, I agree.

yep..

[Anonymous Coward]

I am thinking about open sourcing my sex life.

Re:yep..

[Ignignot]

You better hope no one installs any trojans through your back door...

Re:yep..

[Arctic Dragon]

You want to give people a hand?

Re:yep..

[VikingBerserker]

Don't assume that open-sourcing will instantly solve all your incompatability issues.

Re:yep..

[cowboy76Spain]

Didn't you just mispell "outsourced"?

Re:yep..

[Gillious]

So long as your source don't get forked..

Re:yep..

[TeknoHog]

You could always use a Trojan to prevent trojans...

Re:yep..

[ubuntu]

Open-sourcing your sex life may or may not not be the best route for you. Let me explain some of your different licensing options, since I've already been down this road and have learned a lot of painful lessons.

If you open-source your sex life, you won't likely increase your userbase as much as you'd think. You can expect at best 1-2% of the total users (much like "laissez-faire" Linux, hot, sexy, and openly available as it may be). Haggard old Windows (technically under a much stricter one-user "monogamous" license), on the other hand, has 90% of the mindshare. There's a lot more hot coeds interested in investing their time into a long-term legal, registered copy of Windows than Linux, if you know what I mean. Women feel comforted by the strict EULA "vows" that you take when you click "I DO" during the install. If you opt for a proprietary, single-user sex life license, you can be sure of a certain level of solid usage, but unlike Linux, there is really no thrill or excitement involved. The Windows GUI gets tired and stale very quickly, is generally considered "crippleware" and won't do a lot of the naughty things Linux does for you without paying dearly for the extra functionality, and is prone to "bloat" -- Windows seems to double in size every few years. HOWEVER -- the secret of Windows happiness for you, my friend, is that cheap and dirty copies of Windows are easily "acquired" when nobody's looking, and most people have either considered going for a quickie download or are running an illicit second copy somewhere besides their main computer right now. I have a legal copy of Win98 running, but I UPGRADED to a secret install of 2000 on the side, and it's a lot smoother running... unfortunately, no OS ever went down as frequently as my original Win98 did, except when I experimented with Amiga in college.

The main problems with running an illicit copy of Windows are that

a)you KNOW that a lot of other people are enjoying the same copy that you are at the same time as you, and

b) Windows will definitely lead you to viruses, bugs of all sorts that are hard to get rid of, and in the end, ultimate disappointment and regret.

What I'm saying is you don't have to announce you're open to actually BE open. And if you're married, you should DEFINITELY tell your wife that you fully respect her Intellectual Property rights, onerous and burdensome as they may be, and that you respect her patent monopoly despite the fact that she never seems to use it. If you mess with your wife (the legal owner), you will end up in a place worse than death -- alone and settling for the most pathetic OS of all -- Windows "ME".

Re:yep..

[The Snowman]

I just came across this post during meta-moderation, and it is one of the funniest human/computer analogies I have seen in a long time. Good job.

Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Duh

[lionheart1327]

I know I'll probably get modded down for this because of the stigma of the evil "C" word, but here we go.

Open source, and the volunteer way in which it is done, is basically the utopian communism that the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc. were striving to get to, but fucked up.

Real communism is not people being forced to be "equal". It is the unselfish sharing of everything, and volunteering your time and effort for the greater good.

Now, people can't seem to share their physical goods, but on the Internet it seems that some people are willing to share virtual goods. When it doesn't really hurt you to give your neighbor a hand, it seems that people are willing to do it.

Of course, there are those like the RIAA and the MPAA, that are completely against it, but most Slashdotters seem to be for it.

So maybe Bill Gates is right, and Linux is communist?

Well, if you take away the prejudice against the "C" word caused by decades of propoganda, maybe thats actually a Good Thing?

Re:Duh

[nomadic]

Yep, the only thing open source coders added to it was the erroneous assertion that they were the first to do it.

Re:Duh

[Analogy Man]

Then there is that other 'C' word...Christian.

Talk about making oneself flamebait. Christ proposed that people be kind, good, generous, loving to each other...(Not because it was required for salvation but because it demonstrated you appreciation for the grace of God).

So, giving your fellow man your time, energy and expertise over the internet is a Christian thing to do.

Be an open source contributor! Be a Christian Communists.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

You're giving Christ too much credit. He just echoed the same basic sentiments that Buddha and others that came before him (and after him, see Mohammed) originally laid out. In essence, be nice to people. That's it.

Re:Duh

[asoko]

I'd argue that the GPL is communist, while the BSD (or MIT) license is libertarian.

GPL says "No way in hell you can ever make a profit from this" while BSD license says "Do whatever you want with it." One assures code will always be free (as in beer), other assures the people who use it will always have freedom (as in speech).

Which one you use depends on the result you want. I'm trying not to inject my bias into this, though I think I've already failed.

Re:Duh

[xPhoenix]

Then there's always 'C' for Correct. Maybe "giving your fellow man your time, energy and expertise over the internet" (or over other means) is the CORRECT thing to do. Not correct in the sense that any religious character or figurehead would like or would have liked it or promoted it, but correct in the sense that it ultimately produces the BEST results, both industrially/for society and for individuals' own happiness. I suppose this falls back on the utopian communist concept in some respects, namely, a world where everyone does what is best and beneficial for all, and therefore for themselves.

Re:Duh

[narq]

You make this out to be a bad thing ...

Re:Duh

[thisissilly]

I'll disagree. Open source is a free market of ideas. The good ones are kept, enhanced traded. The worthless ones are discarded. Closed source and patents represent artificial trade barriers.

Re:Duh

[bigpat]

"Open source, and the volunteer way in which it is done, is basically the utopian communism that the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc. were striving to get to, but fucked up.

Real communism is not people being forced to be "equal". It is the unselfish sharing of everything, and volunteering your time and effort for the greater good."

And singing and puppies, don't forget the puppies or the happy thoughts.

Just don't mention that fundamental to any government's ability to compel people is the threat and use of violence. This is just as true for the most democratic governments and the most dictatorial. Otherwise it isn't government.

So, those countries you cited "fucked up" precisely because they imposed a system on people that is predicated upon forced labor. People are "given" what they need and from them is taken whatever labor they are deemed capable of providing. And those people are punished if they don't or won't provide whatever it is they are thought to be capable of. Communism has nothing to do with voluntary contributions to society inherent in open source development or charity, but rather communism is based upin forced labor and servitude. Communism is very little different than bourgeois capitalism in effect, except that direction over the means of production is determined by political influence rather than family or personal wealth. Where who you know becomes the only wealth that matters.

In many ways America has become more an more an example of communism at work, where most people "receive" just enough to live on and are essentially forced more and more to work for others benefit rather than our own, but that is another debate.

The reason that all communist countries became political dictatorships isn't some statistical aberration, but rather it is the result of the system itself. To compare the free sharing of ideas inherent to the open source movement, with Communism is just to ignore the truth and to ignore the historical basis of the movement itself. And worse disrespects the memories of millions of people who died as a direct result of Communism's application.

Compare Open source to the scientific method, or to the work of charity or to religion, but not a system based upon coercion and forced labor.

God Damned Communists.

Re:Duh

[bit01]

GPL says "No way in hell you can ever make a profit from this" ... though I think I've already failed.

Yep, many companies have made a profit from GPL programs.

---

Like trademarks, and for much the same reason, copyright should be lost if a product line becomes generic.

Re:Duh

[Money for Nothin']

Actually, I would argue that OSS is about as free-market a system as any I know of (I say that as a personally *very* pro-free-market-minded person).

Sure, you might share your code with somebody else. But you still hold the copyright to the code, correct? So long as you hold the copyright to your code, that code is still *your* property. It is your private property which you're allowing somebody else to use, voluntarily.

OSS is no more communist than, say, a neighbor having a party on a warm summer afternoon, cooking up hamburgers and hotdogs and allowing everybody else to come into his yard, eat, play vollyball, and so on - perhaps for the optional contribution of one's own dish (Jello, casserole, rolls, brownies, etc.). It's very much a private, free-market exchange.

The only way things get confused is when govn't agencies start contributing code, such as the NSA's contributions to the Linux kernel. There you have an example of both privately-copywritten code from various individuals mingling with publicly-owned code written by the government (really, "the people", by way of tax money). That confuses things considerably. But the more code comes from private sources, the more of a zero-price (note: *not* zero-cost!) capitalist transaction it becomes. The kernel has become large enough that it's no longer a purely-private affair, but AFAIK, remains still largely one -- even from contributors in other nations.

So long as the private property rights of copyright law remain in place (because all of capitalism requires at least laws to protect the property rights of the property owners/creators/controllers; property rights are capitalism's bedrock foundation), I see no real contradiction between OSS and the capitalist economic system... Indeed, the GPL itself would be null and void without copyright law, i.e., in a system of communism.

That fact makes Microsoft's contention that "OSS is communist" considerably-harder. A load of BS, actually. They're just angry because they know in the long-run, they can't compete with a labor market which is willing to work for peanuts (at least for now; I'm not convinced it's a trend that can hold up very well once major players have been out-competed by "free labor").

Perhaps some OSS promoters are communists in their own ideology; many certainly seem to be, IME. Perhaps they even believe they are promoting communism by releasing OSS! IMO, howver, just the opposite would in fact be true...

(Communism, however, is a very bad idea. Actually, there have been very few instances of real ocmmunism in the world. What the world witnessed in Soviet Russia, East Germany, Maoist China, Vietnam, present-day North Korea, and so forth -- is, in actual governmental structure, socialism, not communism. Communism would exist absent (or at least mostly-so) of government; socialism, by its very definition, means that the govn't owns and controls the output of the economy -- that was (and is, in N. Korea's case, though even *they* are slowly liberalizing their economy) *precisely* the case found in those nations. And look where they wound up, and look at what they did to their people... Communism fails for the same reason socialism does though -- lack of incentive. That's the reason the 2 instances of communism I'm aware of -- early America, and certain villages in Maoist China -- failed so badly and starved people so horribly...)

Re:Duh

[akadruid]

And as with Christianity, you're guaranteed to get a lot more out than you put in. In the long run anyway.

Also, open sourcing your code is fitting with almost any religion, as well as moral codes that a great many people and societies respect.

As I understand it, open source contributors would also meet approval from Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists, for example.

Re:Duh

[lionheart1327]

Um, were you born and raised in the Soviet Union?

I didn't think so.

I was.

Re:Duh

[bigpat]

So you should know better, than you do.

Finally it will be time

[tezza]

To fork the government.

Re:Finally it will be time

[youngerpants]

it certainly makes a change from the government forking us

Re:Finally it will be time

[smittyoneeach]

Oh, come off it: the government is a fine blend of a self-fork and a do-do loop.
It's when people quit whining that you know revolution is spinning around...

Re:Finally it will be time

[Analogy Man]

Says the helmet haired lobbyist with too many teeth tossing aside a legislator:

Get me another congressman this one's split.

Academic Peer Review

[gowen]

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.

Re:Academic Peer Review

[krysith]

Isn't part of open source keeping track of who made which changes? That is a beneficial thing, especially in cases where there is more than one author. I have read academic papers with 30+ authors, and I never knew which one did the modeling and who built the hardware. Sure, if I had investigated or asked, I could have find out easily, but having that recorded in the paper would be a bonus.

In addition, it would also help in cases where a grad student did all the work but the professor gets most of the credit. If the change history shows that the grad student did all the work, maybe they will actually get the credit they deserve?

Re:Academic Peer Review

[gowen]

I have read academic papers with 30+ authors

Sure, that's pretty common in some fields (Biotech, for example). But 300+ authors? 3000? How many authors would you say the Linux kernel has?

If the change history shows that the grad student did all the work, maybe they will actually get the credit they deserve?

Well, that does presuppose that check-ins correspond to workload. And remember, if a supervisor has the original idea and devises the techniques to answer some question, and the grad student does all the grunt work, who's to say that the grad student deserves the credit? In that scenario (not universal, but not uncommon) he's replaceable in a way the supervisor isn't.

Re:Academic Peer Review

[krysith]

You points are good, but realize that application of Open Source methods to academia don't mean that they are going to do things the same way Linus does. Science has always been fairly "Open Source", long before that particular name was coined, simply due to the need for reproducibility of experiments.

I am sure that if new methods were introduced, that the people using those new methods would adapt to the use of those methods. If it were clear that whoever records the idea or technique is the one who is given credit, then it is to the benefit of the idea-maker to record it themselves, rather than letting a grad student take care of it for them. The advantage of the new method is that currently, who does what is not recorded at all, leading to certain ethical dilemmas which have been the subject of recent articles: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-11/p42.html for example.

Re:Academic Peer Review

[benhocking]

Sure, that's pretty common in some fields (Biotech, for example). But 300+ authors? 3000? How many authors would you say the Linux kernel has?

Biotech ain't got nothing on particle physics (My count yielded 600 authors on this paper (or "study").)

Re:Academic Peer Review

[gowen]

Holy Moley? Did the give authorship to everyone in the lab? Strewth.

Re:Academic Peer Review

[aprilsound]

Except a grad student cant get published on his own. That's why the proffesor takes the credit and puts his/her name first, not because he cares so much about getting credit for the grad student's wonderfully innovative thesis.

Re:Academic Peer Review

[Relic of the Future]

How many authors would you say the Linux kernel has?

I don't know. How many? Someone here should be able to give an answer...

Open source and human nature

[Flywheels of Fire]

I think the "Open Source" model can be extended to all aspects of society. But it requires a paradigm shift in the way the world works.

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.

Re:Open source and human nature

[h4rr4r]

Yes it would could then work, and there is already a name for this system...
Marxism
For the Americans in the crowed conveniently leave out the fact that it is a form of communism when you mention it. Otherwise you will be stoned to death or moderated into oblivion as I am sure I will be

Re:Open source and human nature

[bfizzle]

Open source model does nto work well with this inherent greediness.

I disagree. This model works quite well in a capitalistic model. That is why the license states that you have to distribute source code with a product if you inturn distribute it. So if someone develops the Linux kernel and tries to sell it her payment to the orginal developers is the work she put into the code. There is a cost of using open source code and if it fits in your business model then great!

Re:Open source and human nature

[huhwhatduck]

I agree that the capitalist model works well in this instance. The 20th century was, after all, seen as a fight between three different, irreconcilable politics. Nazism, Communism, and Democracy (usually associated with capitalism). Nazism was obviously a definite no. Communism, while some think it is gone, and others joke about the so-called "Creative Communists," the overarching idea of cooperation still exists. Yet we see with the innovation that the internet has inspired that Democracy, capitalism, and this sense of "free culture" which is cooperative, all work together. This is what is creating our new world order, and it is imperative that we continue to push open source software, transparency, democracy, cooperation, and individualism for us to see a pleasant future.

Re:Open source and human nature

[futuresheep]

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.

Open Source can work just fine with a "individualist/capitalist model". I think this is more a symptom of the industry than of human nature. Take a look at the culinary industry. There are two methods of operating:

1) Proprietary/Closed recipies. 2) Shared/Open recipies.

There are plenty of examples of companies and restaraunts making money using either method.

Some, like Coca Cola and KFC, choose to guard their recipies and keep them secret. However, with some good reverse engineering, you can attempt to recreate those products.

Some, like many non chain restaraunts, will openly share the recipies for their menu items. Their food and ingredients are not kept secret, and if you can take it home and make it better, feel free!

In the big picture, both sides of the industry realize that at it's core, food is all made from the same base ingredients, using the same basic production processes, and that in the end, success is delivered by the perceived value of the item purchased. Sharing or not sharing what goes into that item is a decision made by the manufacturer.

Re:Open source and human nature

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Meh. If there are 'commies' in America, they're more likely to read Slashdot. Slashdotters fit (as I remember) the general characteristics of communists: Privelidged, intelligent, well-meaning people with a slightly skewed and/or idealistic and/or innocent view of the way the world works.

I personally am a bit of a Marxist, and become more of one everytime I read about Enron or WorldCom or Microsoft or George W. Bush. I apologize if that offends your sense of Americanism. I also eat French Fries.

Point is, though, Marx would (IMHO) say that Europe is very much closer to what he thought was a logical society than Soviet Russia ever really was.... He definitely put a limitation on how much development a country needed to start down the road of socialism. (a ruined word)

America, well, I would say he'd call America approaching the bottom of its swing into totalitarianism of the wealthy. The New Yorker had a cartoon of one businessman talking to another saying, "This is the best time for consolidation since Feudalism," a few months ago.

The country I'd guess might make it to a supportable, non-militaristic, non-dictatorship, Socialist style state first would be India..... However, since I've always been idealistic and uneducated about an entire half of the world, I'm willing to say that I'm an idiot to expect that and know for sure that I'm avoiding educating myself on it for a reason.

Socialists were never stupid, just ignorant. Reading the literature of the time (Wright, Sinclair, Orwell, etc) shows some of the most interesting people of a generation captured by an ideal and disillusioned by a system....

Open Source Software leading to social systems changing is an interesting development in culture but hardly surprising considering that the cream of the privileged and intelligent in the Gen X and Y generations all were drawn to computers as youth, and OS is in some ways a more technically efficient way to run systems that everyone uses than what we use now.

Politics is changing because of our technology, just look at MoveOn and SwiftBoat Veterans for Truth. (commentary reserved here)

Re:Open source and human nature

[bobetov]

There are indeed great similarities between open source and communism/marxism. Both involve collective action for the benefit of all.

The interesting thing to me is how communism-as-economic-system differs from open-source-as-software-development-process.

Basically, it seems to me that what makes open source development work is the zero marginal cost of code copies. Basically, we have your garden variety despots running most open source projects (Hi Linus!). Why don't we run into the same problems economic collectivism seems to devolve into?

In communist economies, the despots inevitably use their control of the collective development results to extort more and more power and wealth, eventually bringing collapse. What makes open source work is, should Linus decide he needs a shiny new beemer or whatnot, and demand $10 per copy of Linux used, the world shrugs, grabs a copy of the source, and elects a new despot. There's upheaval but no long term damage.

I think we'll find that open source models work great where anyone can push the project forward, and no one can hold it hostage, but whenever zero-sum effects come into play, it will fail to work as hoped.

Re:Open source and human nature

[maxpublic]

Open source model does nto work well with this inherent greediness.

This doesn't explain why people pay for Linux when they could easily download it and burn it to CD, or why they pay for music (iTunes) that they can get just as easily for free.

My guess is that most human beings (that means someone other than a bunch of college students) actually think paying for value is a good thing; even feel obliged to do it. And I'd suspect that the folks who go on about how humans are basically greedy or freeloaders or parasitical are themselves these things, and refuse to accept the fact that most people are simply more ethical than they are.

Max

Re:Open source and human nature

[maxpublic]

How could there have been a fight between democracy and communism when neither exists anywhere in the world? There are no democracies, nor can I think of any state remotely approaching this ideal since ancient Athens; and even they didn't have universal democracy (slaves, women).

As for communism, none of the so-called 'communist' states are even remotely communist. They're dictatorships whose economic model is much closer to fascism than anything else. Communism is just a buzzword they use to promote their propaganda.

Max

Re:Open source and human nature

[h4rr4r]

I am also an american. I was making reference to the fact that most Americans begin to foam at the mouth at the mention of the word communism.

I do not believe that many communists actually read slashdot. If you do not believe me look at all the "commies sux0r hardc0re" remarks one of these threads generates.

I would also agree that Marx would now think
that europe is closer to his ideal than Soviet Russia ever was. Soviet Russia represented simple communism and not marxism at all.

Also the USA has most definatly fallen to the tyranny of the wealthy!

I also believe we need a revolution not what we supposedly had with the revolutionary war(which was not a revolution just a war for independence).

I am an anarchocommunist but would settle for marxism if we could only have that.

PS french fries are cool but not the one at mcdonalds they suck and so does that company.

Now mods mark me offtopic

Re:Open source and human nature

[huhwhatduck]

True, but I was using the words as the buzzwords that they are. Besides, like happiness, politics follows a model of a never-ending search for perfection. There are some "examples" of "true" Communist states that have existed, and you're right that there has never been a true democracy. However, I was just saying that with semi-recent developments we have a better possibility to approach that sort of "free culture," with social stratification probably working more as a Bell curve in coming years than the current model of wealth through inherited wealth, etc. Of course, some of this talk about politics is moot if you believe in the true power that our technology can give us. Anyone up for a multi-celled organism known as the posthuman race?

Re:Open source and human nature

[Dutch_Cap]

"Yes it would could then work, and there is already a name for this system...
Marxism"

Personally, I consider open source to be closer to the ideals of Libertarian Socialism, aka Anarchism. Marxism is usually about central management (let's forget about Libertarian Marxism for the sake of briefness), while Anarchism prefers decentralization of power and production.

Re:Open source and human nature

[geoffspear]

Well, it helps that an open source project doesn't need to feed and protect millions of people while its leaders enjoy almost godlike powers and responsibilities. That kind of makes things a bit trickier.

"I could convert everyone on the planet to their component atoms" has a way of inflating the ego and leading to corruption that "Wow, lots of people like this software I wrote" can't match.

Re:Open source and human nature

[maxpublic]

There are some "examples" of "true" Communist states that have existed

My knowledge of history is pretty good, and I can't think of a single nation on Earth that's remotely approached actual communism. Examples would be nice.

Max

Re:Open source and human nature

[huhwhatduck]

Hence the quotes.

Re:Open source and human nature

[skubeedooo]

Human nature is such that we try to do the least amount of work to achieve maximum effect. Humans are essentially greedy.

I think what you mean is efficient (or at the very worst lazy). I use Firefox (for example) because it allows me to do the least amount of work (measured in hand movements) to achieve the maximum effect. Does this make me greedy? I use a mechanical washing machine because it cleans my clothes well with the minimum amount of work. Does this make me greedy?

Perhaps you are one of those people who actually think that life is zero-sum and that it must be the case that every time i save myself some effort, someone else has to put in an equal amount of extra effort? Open source is good partly because it can be a more efficient form of production than conventional methods. This is why people other than /. whackos actually use it.

IF one day we humans change our intrinsic nature, open source model might well replace the current individualist/capitalist model.

Yawn.

Re:Open source and human nature

[21mhz]

The country I'd guess might make it to a supportable, non-militaristic, non-dictatorship, Socialist style state first would be India...

What happened to those Scandinavian countries?

Re:Open source and human nature

[asoko]

No one is PURELY greedy or PURELY philanthropic. But it's much better to rely on people being greedy and be pleasantly surprised, than to structure society based on philanthropy and have it collapse due to greed.

Re:Open source and human nature

[arbitraryaardvark]

Mod parent up - informative.
Open source is socialism on the jesus model - let's share - instead of the stalin/roosevelt model.
Those of us who are anarchists tend to avoid the A word, and talk instead of post-scarcity economics brought on by the open source revolution.
Cory Doctorow (of boingboing and eff) has a novel on these themes, down and out in the magic kingdom, free online at www.craphound.com/down. link

Wikipedia and google are open source info.
blogs have opensourced journalism.
So far there is little progress in opensourcing textbooks and schools - but that will happen.
As the open source movement starts to provide, free, what we used to think we needed governments for. Perhaps the state will wither away.
In soviet russia, government forks you.
In soviet new jersey, same.

Re:Open source and human nature

[Dutch_Cap]

Try the Spanish revolution. If you're interested "The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-management in the Spanish Revolution" by Sam Dolgoff is a very interesting book. During the Spanish civil war, for a few years, Anarcho Communism and other forms of libertarion organisation seemed to work very well. It didn't take long until they were crushed by the (Marxist) Communists and later the Fascists, though.

Re:Open source and human nature

[m50d]

Representative democracies like that I live in (UK, although we have some weirdness with royal perrogative (I don't mean that word) which messes things up but not too much) are a reasonable first-order approximation to a true democracy. Whether or not a state is a dictatorship is pretty much irrelevant to whether or not it's communist. There were some genuine attempts at communism, before stalin took over soviet russia was by and large really trying. Of course power corrupts and most states are nowhere near what they pupport to be, but they are towards that way, and they are democratic/communist enough to make that a topic of conflict

Re:Open source and human nature

[bit01]

Open source model does nto work well with this inherent greediness.

You are ignoring the statistics. With 6,000,000,000+ people in the world and the ability to copy software millions of times all it takes is 0.01% of people to be not greedy and you can get something happening. There are many, often selfish, reasons why people create open source e.g. a loss leader, a student getting practice, a retiree looking for something to do or a big company where the marginal cost of development is small and the publicity payback is big.

---

Commercial software bigots - a dying breed.

What's that?

[menace3society]

People produce better work when they collaborate instead of keeping secrets? Preposterous!

Deconstruction of Falling Source

[Tackhead]

> explores the use of open source methods to improve academic peer review, drafting of legislation and even media regulation."

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.

Delenn: "John Sheridan was a good and kind and decent man."
Academician: "You came all this way just to say that?"
Delenn: "You came just as far to say less."
Academician: "But this is extraordinary. There's so much more we'd like to ask you. So much more we'd like to know."
Delenn: "You do not wish to know anything. You wish only to speak. That which you know, you ignore because it is inconvenient. That which you do not know, you invent."

- Babylon 5, The Deconstruction of Falling Stars

Re:Deconstruction of Falling Source

[Have Blue]

You take a single quote from a story set in a fictional universe in the far future and apply that to every single member of several very broad, complex, and populous categories? I think Slashdot just set a new world record in generalization.

Re:Deconstruction of Falling Source

[shpoffo]

With the exception of math/science/engineering academicians, none of the above have any real interest in improving the peer review process.

You forgot Artists - who have an active interest in receiving input form others. A well-deisnged Fine Arts program is grounded in concept development and critique.

.
-shpoffo

Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Bad idea

[zappepcs]

Yeah, but then the constitutional ammendment that prohibited alcohol might have been prevented if open source was used for input on its implementation. Laws are never implemented in a 'finished' state, they simply are good enough to accomplish the goal at the time. There are many laws on the books that are absolutely bizare, http://www.lawguru.com/weird/.

The open source method might be just what is required to clean up some of the bizareness of the legal world? Not only that, but it should be more than lawyers and lobbyists that have direct access to influencing things like patent laws.

Re:Bad idea

[cowboy76Spain]

While I agree with you, I find the law a bad analogy of this... many times a law sets just the basic ideas and rules and leaves the details (fines, administrative procedures, etc.) to other texts (and these can even be different for different situations).

For example, in Spain, the law allows openning the shops several sundays each year, but it is up to the local governments to set how many and which ones.

Re:Bad idea

[TuringTest]

But why would you want to make a separate snapshot? When talkin about laws, maybe it would be better to have a "live" corpus used day by day than a x-years old snapshot.

Re:Bad idea

[lucas_picador]

Legislatures pass unfinished laws all the time, although usually their "unfinished" nature is a consequence of conflicting factions inserting various compromise amendments and bits of pork that render the end result incoherent. They then rely on the judiciary to interpret and implement them. I think it's actually a pretty good analogy to the release of unfinished software into the hands of developers/sysadmins.

Re:Bad idea

[thuh Freak]

A snapshot could be used in the legal proceedings of an old crime. If I commit a crime, and the law changes before I'm prosecuted, I'm not bound by the new law, but by the old (and only by the old law's punishment requirements). So, this could be useful.

Re:Bad idea

[FhnuZoag]

Actually, this makes it especially useful for academic peer review. Scientific research is never complete, and an ongoing revision that recognises work still to done is a much more accurate depiction of real research results.

Re:Bad idea

[gr0kCalvin]

You can definitely have a list of TODO's that go along with a law! In fact, the fact that we don't is a big problem; we are basically assuming that our laws are perfect the first time around. Hello!

Open Source will have come of age...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when reports on Open Source are no longer in pdf format.

Re:Open Source will have come of age...

[alexhs]

...when reports on Open Source are no longer in pdf format.

Well... what's wrong with pdf ? Specs are available here and that's why there are lots of PDF readers out there...

Um, 1999 called...

[wildwood]

and they want their 'synergy' back.

Academic research itself _is_ ...

[slabbe]

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

Wow

[huhwhatduck]

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.

heh

[Anonymous Coward]

i can see it now in a few years

press release:
labour government heralds a new era of common sense

Oh great.

[zapfie]

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.

Re:Oh great.

[disposable60]

Why would they? Their products are already doing that just fine, thanks.

fork

[ajrs]

the word is fork.

I tried that once...

[Anita Coney]

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.

OS Informational Database

[Anonymous Monkey]

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.

Re:OS Informational Database

[DrLZRDMN]

What inventions do slashdoters think are too important not to share?
Those related to health, medicine included. If you can't trust closed source software there is no way you can trust closed source food or medicine. If I gave you a clear liqiud and said "Here, drink this". Would you? I wouldn't. I would first ask what it was. If the provider refused to say what the liquid was he has something to hide, and if its worth hiding its probobly not worth ingesting.

Also, a tangent, I think an online wikpidia like open cooking database would be a cool project.
Open source cookbook
Wiki cookbook

Re:OS Informational Database

[Infinityis]

I don't know if it's strictly "open source" but if you're into cooking, I must instead recommend the obligatory http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

Re:OS Informational Database

[futuresheep]

As an FYI, that was Mercedes, who IIRC, will always leave their safety feature patents unenforced.

Re:OS Informational Database

[Anonymous Monkey]

Thanks! I was wondering who it realy was

20 days late

[lamz]

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?

Re:20 days late

[CousinLarry]

no, if you actually read the page you'll see that the PDF is free and a printed version costs money to cover costs.

Making a video documentary, OSS style

[Cryofan]

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.

Re:Making a video documentary, OSS style

[pintpusher]

Why not use a "Release candidate" structure for everything up to shooting footage, then when your script, content, structure etc is ready for "Release" you can send the whole thing to a team to shoot it. For example, you can have collaborators submitting transcripts of interviews and the like with the stipulation that the subject agrees to be interviewed on camera at a later date. Collaborators can submit still frames of key moments in particular bits of stock footage. They could even submit video for once-in-a-lifetime events that could later be segued to effectively within the final version.

That way you get the consistent look and feel of having one (or more) "units" shooting the film all at once. You can get consistent production values by having one team be responsible for the bulk of the raw footage.

Then enter a second "open" phase where the entire raw footage is available for OSS type collaboration on the editing side until a "Final Release Cut" is obtained and you execute the cuts and edits and release the final version.

My point is -- why should people "not expect that much anyway"? By putting a little structure in to the project at the beginning, you could probably come up with some really good results. A little cooperation from some more professional videographers for that one phase of shooting the thing could add tons of value to the project while leaving the pre- and post- production areas fully open.

just a thought.

Re:Making a video documentary, OSS style

[Cryofan]

I doubt anyone could be persuaded to work on my project from scratch unless it is presented in a somewhat complete package already. It is my idea, and not theirs. I need a completed project to initiate the snowball effect.

THat said, I do feel somewhat confident that once many leftist/liberals view the completed proto-video, they will find my thesis compelling. One problem is that my theses are very original, although many leftists who are familiar with Chomsky will also be familiar with some of my thesis. Frankly, some of my thesis and my perspective on American history will be so radical that unless you see it presented documentary-style, it may seem rather crackpottish and tinfoilhattish....

I am counting on a snowball effect to gather some people to do a remake/extension of it. No one wants to start on a project from scratch that is pretty much all someone's else's idea. But I am hoping there are some leftists who upon seeing the documentary, and seeing my invitation at the end of the doc for others to take my work and collaborate OSS style to improve and extend it, will then do so. It may take years for it to get underway. Broaband needs more penetration here in America for this sort of collaboration to take off.

But the video will be there, waiting for that to happen. It can be distributed over p2p, and specifically bit-torrent style p2p via the auspices of free video distributors such as archive.org, yahoo, and google.

Re:Making a video documentary, OSS style

[pintpusher]

I get your point, but I think you'd be surprised how many people likely share your view and would be willing to jump on board. I would imagine that many an OSS project was begun by one person thinking they were essentially writing something for only themselves only to watch it grow well beyond that.

I sense a little "ownership" in your comments that make me think that you might, in the long run, be unhappy with the results that come of your idea. What if, and this is all for arguments sake, the ideas you espouse in your documentary are taken up by many many enlightened people who massage it, expand and develop it, buy into it and ultimately change it into something you do not agree with? Or, what if, in their research and development of the ideas they determine, collectively, that your ideas are flawed and the project ends up denouncing its own original idea? All these I think are interesting possibilities in an open source project like you have suggested. It will be interesting to watch what happens, eh?

As for my previous post, I was looking at a project from the ground up where a person such as yourself has a germ of an idea for a film and posts that idea, and maybe a basic sketch of the project and opens it from that point on. You are creating a final product and then looking for others to take it over. Sort of different things altogether I suppose.

I think it would be interesting to watch something from the ground up though. Imagine if Hollywood ran that way? all movies began as a post to a bulletin board somewhere and the studios only picked those ones that had good significant action from the community at large and had developed to a certain point? Might make for some interesting movies with real plots and real character development and all the good stuff, plus great piles of pr0n thrown in for good measure. wow!

Just like... uh... science

[SunPin]

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?

Natural greediness

[ites]

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.

Re:Natural greediness

[MerlinTheWizard]

Very well put.

Re:Natural greediness

[TuringTest]

I don't agree that Open Source is a form of capitalis, but then I also don't agree that capitalism and liberalism are synonims.

To me, capitalism allows big ammounts of wealth to be controlled by a single individual or small group; and the goverment protects that centralized control in the name of private property.

Open source (specially in it's GPL form) is designed to avoid that kind of control from a single source. Government only intervenes to avoid one player from taking away what is, essentially, a public property. So it's goal is freedom, but it doesn't allow freedom to accumulate capital with government protection.

Re:Natural greediness

[ites]

From
Wikipedia:

In common usage it refers to an economic system in which land and capital are privately owned and operated for profit and where investments, production, distribution, income, and prices are determined largely through the operation of a free market rather than by centralized state control (as in a command economy)

I believe my statement that the GPL is an expression of pure unfettered capitalism is accurate, though it may irritate many.

Personally I am an ardent admirer both of the GPL and the capitalist society that allows me the freedom to express myself through free software. I believe I understand both very well, having built a successful and enjoyable business by writing free software since 1991 or so.

Governments do have an essential role in capitalism, as in free software, and it's the role you identify: to provide rules that enable the free exchange of goods and punish those who abuse the system and steal.

However, the idea that capitalism is about "accumulation" and "exploitation" is simply laughable. Such a system is properly called an "oligarchy" and it is highly anti-capitalistic, not to mention economically inefficient.

Re:Natural greediness

[IamTheRealMike]

Disagree - if that were true, nobody would work on software that didn't obviously lead to reward. But people hack on open source games like bzFlag that'll never get them a consultancy gig or a book. Do you think Stallman was motivated by kudos? No.

I don't think it's worth speculating too much about the motivations people have for working on free software. For some it's just fun, for others it's an ego trip, for others it's their job and for yet others it's a war against corporate power and the ills of society. It's better to concentrate on the lessons to be learned from the movement, which is what the guys in the article are doing. Good for them, I say.

Re:Natural greediness

[asoko]

GPL is not the most free license out there (in terms of free speech). The BSD license takes that prize.

However, if your goal is that your code always remain free (as in beer) then GPL is for you.

If your goal is that people who use your code be as unfettered as possible, then BSD is for you.

You are absolutely correct, though. It gets my goat when people turn to marxism because they think capitalism is about the few rich exporting the many working class. In a capitalist society, money is not zero-sum. Money (value) can be created and destroyed. Power, however, is zero-sum.

Re:Natural greediness

[TuringTest]

Governments do have an essential role in capitalism, as in free software, and it's the role you identify: to provide rules that enable the free exchange of goods and punish those who abuse the system and steal.

But as I (and many others) understand capitalism, the rules are already stablished and they revolve around private property. My point is that if you change the rules and make state support public commons, it shouldn't be still called capitalism (maybe open-sourceism?).

And I believe that oligarchy is possible inside (old-meaning) capitalism, since it's based on the defense of private property - even when this defense collides with market efficiency.

It's not about OpenSource

[gregorio]

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.

*do* read this

[thisoneguy]

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.

In summary:

[Stradenko]

Two heads are better than one.

Don't do it!

[johannesg]

There are already too many "nice plan, shame nothing ever happens" type projects on sourceforge...

Source??? What source??

[SuperDuperMan]

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.

Open Source Shakespeare

[kokoloko]

Does anybody really think that would be improvement?

Re:Open Source Shakespeare

[Cerv]

Shakespeare's texts are in the public domain, Go ahead and try to improve them, then release your new versions for others to modify.
I'll reserve judgement about whether it's actually an improvment till then.

Re:Open Source Shakespeare

[flyingsquid]

I don't know if I'd say improvement, but Tom Stoppard did some different stuff ("Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"). I mean, okay perhaps it's not quite as pithy and quotable as "to be, or not to be..."

Rosencrantz: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?

Guildenstern: No.

Rosencrantz: Nor do I, really. It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never *know* you were in a box, would you? It would be just like you were asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you. Not without any air. You'd wake up dead for a start, and then where would you be? In a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it. Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that. I mean, you'd be in there forever, even taking into account the fact that you're dead. It isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off, "I'm going to stuff you in this box. Now, would you rather be alive or dead?" naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance, at least. You could lie there thinking, "Well, at least I'm not dead. In a minute somebody is going to bang on the lid, and tell me to come out." [bangs on lid]

Rosencrantz: "Hey you! What's your name? Come out of there!"

Guildenstern: [long pause] I think I'm going to kill you.

For that matter, wasn't the story of Hamlet itself borrowed by Shakespeare?

How long until a national government is OSS-Based?

[caseymj]

Governments fall at the will of the people (ideally). Are there emerging governments that have considered making a constitution based on OSS?

Open Source as a political system

[sellin'papes]

The principles of open source are extremely similar to those of the political system of anarchy.

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.

wow

[mattyrobinson69]

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

open source is the best of both worlds

[Anonymous Coward]

socialism and democracy.

Re:open source is the best of both worlds

[chord.wav]

What about starting a new religion based on open source? We could have a territory and make it a principate much like the Vatican where scientist could stay like monks working on new technologies and patents for the common good. Keep the the new new testament in a CVS tree.

I don't think it can.

[Colin Smith]

"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.

Re:Forking, and the government as contract servant

[Em Adespoton]

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?

bad example; not free-as-in-speech itself

[bcrowell]

The two big examples of successful open-source projects that they lead off with are Linux and Wikipedia, with Wikipedia meant to be the one that shows how the model can be applied to things other than software. The Wikipedia project, however, is extremely atypical for a free-information book project. I've catalogued a lot of free books, and almost none of them use the kind of broad, collaborative process they're talking about. The only examples I've come across that are anything like that are Wikipedia and the Biophysics Textbook Online, which has subsequently been split up into a bunch of small, separately maintained articles, rather than continuing to maintain it in book form. In other words, out of the 971 free-as-in-something books in my catalog, Wikipedia is the only one I can dig up that actually used the collaborative open-source model and stayed with it.

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).

Re:How long until a national government is OSS-Bas

[CowbertPrime]

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!".

Open source and free markets

[argoff]

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.

Half truth anyway

[bluGill]

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.

Open source...communism or meritocracy?

[dantheman82]

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.

Open Source Everywhere

[Baby Duck]

Wired had a cover article about "Open Source Everywhere" in Nov 2003.

Re:Open Source Everywhere

[ElyseMyers]

Great article, and a good read. I'm a pretty huge OS proponent myself, but when reading this, one must take into consideration that Wired pours TONS of money into supporting the open source movement. Their reporting may be just a little biased as a result.

C is for cookie, and conciousness raising

[allegr0]

'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.

The revolutionary potential

[Roger Houston]

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!

Communism forced on Europe was the problem...

[gilby]

... not communism itself. This is something most people don't understand. Mostly because its easier to say that communism is wrong, than to say the way it was implemented was wrong.

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:

do not covet thy neighbors house, wife, slaves, cattle, donkeys, other possesions.

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.

Open Source, Sine-Wave of Future?

[newpath4comVersion2]

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.

Far, far too well.

[Grendel Drago]

That works way too well.

Way, way too well.

--grendel drago

I think...

[Grendel Drago]

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

Re:Civil War

[shpoffo]

That will never work! Do you remember what happened when the South forked from the Union?

The problem wasn't with the fork, it was with the merge.

.
-shpoffo