Open Source

The open source movement is kind of a big deal. I’ve been watching it with fascination from the beginning. In the 1990’s it was not at all clear that it would end up completely conquering the world, but it did. Much of the software that you are using at this very moment is open source. It is built into the very foundations of the internet. Open Source out competed fierce capitalistic companies because it is a better way of collaborating. It is the only instance that I know of where communism won. No one owns open source software; people freely donate their time to it as a gift to the world. Many programmers are quite passionate about open source — it is how they are trying to give back, and yet very few even know.

But despite this idealism open source exists to be of use. Not all contributions are accepted. It is not like the wikipedia where there are endless, wasteful edit wars over controversial topics. Open source tends to avoid all that and stays focused on delivering value. And if it doesn’t, some other open source project comes along to replace it. I think open source works so well because humans naturally know how to work together. They don’t really need hierarchy for that — it just kind of wants to happen. Open source allows for that to happen with the least amount of friction.

Typically open source projects start with just a very few contributors, usually just one. They pour themselves into the project and create something of use. Gradually other people find their way to it and start using it. Eventually some of those users want more features. Wouldn’t it be great if this thing did X? But here is the key difference between the normal consumer marketplace — instead of just passively consuming something these people are now called on to be co-creators. And with their contribution, even more people are attracted to the project and it keeps on growing.

That is my dream for this project. Right now I’m the main contributor. I’m trying to create something of use, and I hope to eventually attract a lot of readers. But remember my ambition is way, way bigger than just being an author. And I can’t get there just on my own. My situation reminds me of one of my favorite books to read to my children.

Stone soup

The story goes that three, tired and very hungry soldiers were coming home from a war. When they came to a village and asked for food they were told oh no, we have nothing to spare! So the soldiers announced that they would create soup out of stones. Soup out of stones? Well! The villagers simply had to see that. So they provided a big pot and set water to boil. Then the soldiers found the exact right stones and plop, plop, plop they went into the water. While they waited for the water to heat the soldiers mentioned that stone soup is quite good but it is quite a lot better with a bit of salt. Well, salt is not much and one of the villagers brought some. The soldiers then mentioned that it would be event better with a bit of potatoes, and one of the villagers provided that too. This kept on going on and on until they villagers had created a feast fit for a king. And to think, all it took was some stones.

In the very same way I kind of feel like writing this website is like trying to create stone soup. Save the world? Well! I would love to see you try and do that! And then somehow I coax you to add your own ingredients which encourages others to add theirs until we end up with something amazing.

Github

This website is hosted on Github, which is where many open source projects live. Every aspect of this site is open to inspection and review. Github supports this kind of collaboration through an intuitive interface. The Github UI is meant to be accessible even to people who are not strongly technical. There is a little pencil in the upper left corner of this page. Please try clicking on it. It will take you to the Github page matching this page. Go ahead and and look around a bit — this is the backend of the site. Notice that you can make changes to the site kind of like this is a wiki. The difference is that I need to explicitly grant you that permission to do that. Feel free to ask.

Honestly feel free to poke around the backend a little bit. You are not going to break anything and even if you do, I can always recover (every change is logged and backed up). Several people have helped me with editing and that you can do directly in the Github UI. If you want to do something more ambitious like restructure or create an article then I will teach you how to create a “branch” that is your very own version of the website, and then when we both are in agreement on the changes we will merge it back into this site.

The key legal innovation of open source is to use the very strong legal provisions of copyright law to sort of subvert capitalism. How does it work? Anyone is allowed to use anything on this site. Copy anything you like. You are even encouraged to make money off this site if you can. But. If you use a chunk from this site, you are legally obligated to make your own site (or book or whatever) open source as well. That means that any original stuff that you come up with will also be available for others to copy and use as they see fit. Do you see how this makes the most sense for this kind of work? We need to come together as a community. And we need the freedom to pick and choose whatever content works best without worrying about copyrights.

Dreamcatcher

OK, so those are the nuts and bolts of it, but let me step back into the bigger picture again. I believe this world needs a much bigger shared dream than we have been allowing ourselves to dream. We all have our own dreams, now it is time to bring them together. This site is meant as a kind of dream catcher. It feels like we have been singing our dreams separately. Now it is time to pull all those songs together. Just like in a choir, each of our voices is necessary but part of the greater whole. By myself I am just one lonely voice. It is so obvious that I can not do this alone. Maybe my voice starts the song, but then other voices need to join in. I can’t wait to hear what our voices sound like together.