Networked Politics: open source as a metaphor for new institutions

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Open Source as a Metaphor for New Institutions

Open source for the operating systems of the earth: a metaphor for new institutions?

Marco Berlinguer. The relevance of analogies and metaphors
from the world of information technology for new
thinking about institutions has been a recurring theme of
our discussion. We’ll focus on one of them and ask Brian
to make a short introduction following his suggestion of
“Linux for the operating systems of the earth”.

Brian Holmes. My idea behind the slogan “Linux for OS
Earth” was to use processes of structured co-operation to
redesign the operating systems of a planet in danger.

But first I should explain why the free computer operating
system, Linux, is a fruitful source of metaphoric thinking.
“Free” in this context means that it is to be kept in a
state of “open source” where the code can be used and
altered by anyone to fit into new projects, as long as those
projects in turn remain free and open for use by others.
Linux is obviously a very hi-tech endeavor and though
most people know it is free they also find it forbiddingly
complicated – all you have to do is look at all those lines
of code to feel scared of even talking about it. But let’s
look at how this particular operating system was made.
How it was made is very beautiful, and it can become a
foundation of communication between us at a global level.
(In fact, free software in the larger definition has already
become a foundation because most web-servers use it,
even the commercial ones).

Linux was started from an invitation to participate in something
purely for fun and curiosity (“a program for hackers by
a hacker”). But it also grew in response to a typical capitalist
privatisation scheme: the corporations (let’s call them
Microsoft and Intel) were producing a new kind of chip for
personal computers. It was impossible to install on it the
Unix operating system that was widely and freely used at
public universities. No one at the corporations ever thought
that a Unix-type system could be rewritten for this new
chip, because it would take so many thousands of hours of
programming, and only huge corps have that kind of time.
So they were counting on having a monopoly and being
able to deny this option without any risk of a challenge or a
rival. But one person, Linus Torvalds, had the idea of writing
just a bit of the necessary code and then throwing it out on
the Internet and saying to others: here’s a beginning, if you
all do a few bits, then soon we will have the core of a free
operating system to go on doing the things we want. People
responded. They gradually wrote the core system, and from
the very start they used tools from another free software
project called GNU, which had not yet finished its free core.
What’s more, a special legal contract called the General
Public License or GPL already existed for GNU, which allowed
any code written for free to be kept free, in the sense
of open source. The result today is that we have dozens or
maybe hundreds of different distributions or “flavours” of
the basic GNU/Linux operating system, adapted for different
purposes. The one I use is called Ubuntu, which was made
for people with very little computing knowedge. It is supported
by a very dedicated foundation that wants to make
available what they call “Linux for human beings”.

There is another important aspect to this story. Developers
who make new applications for Ubuntu or any other flavour
of Linux use a website database called Sourceforge, which
basically serves to keep track of the changes continually being
made to specific co-operative projects. This means that every
developer can still do whatever he or she wants, but each one
knows the exact state of the current collective projects. They
can therefore see where their work would be most useful, and
can participate in the real pleasure of doing what they could
never do alone: the pleasure of helping to offer practical tools
for the use of hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of
people. Every time I install a new tool on my computer, what I
see is not the face of the commodity, in the form of a demand
for money which in turn will force me to do more alienating
work. What I see instead is the generous result of thousands of
people’s efforts, and I admire it, I am glad about it.

The metaphor of “open source for the operating systems
of the earth” is a way to evoke and illustrate the possibility
of drawing multiple solutions from common resources. It
means that communities can take basic ideas and adapt
them for local conditions, creating solutions that are tailored
to fit their actual problems and the real collective
capacities of their situation. But those solutions are in
turn open as a knowledge base for use and adaptation by
others. So the metaphor also points to a process and the
need for people to constitute the archive of knowledge, to
keep track of the evolution of projects and make available
the offers of participation, but without any attempt to control
what gets done. This is what we are already achieving
in the knowledge-and-experience exchanges of the social
forum process, and this approach is in the line with the
larger notion of a new radical ecological rationality: a
sophisticated, comprehensive, solidary and directly democratic
way of co-operatively applying our brains and our
hearts to take care of this fragile world we are living in. I
guess that’s something like an overarching goal for cultural
and intellectual production on the left today.

This idea comes from what we observed in our working
group on movements and networks. One of the many big
problems affecting the last cycle of global protest was
what we called “the culturisation of struggles” – that is,
people being involved in the thinking about and symbolising
of struggles at museums, universities and so on - the
very kind of thing that we’re engaged in now. On reflection
however, we felt that this was also a source of strength:
many people are now trying to elaborate forms of knowledge
that can respond to the difficulties that we face in
changing real situations.

We know that there are now a lot of people involved in
trying to transform the political process and the economy,
but their tools are not always good enough. Tools of every
kind, both conceptual and practical, are always important,
but especially now. The future is dark, and there’s clearly
going to be some sort of crisis in the short-to-medium
term. If we have developed deep social knowledge and
usuable practical tools by that moment, it’s going to be
extremely useful. Already today, better ideas actually gain
some purchase and are succesfully applied in exactly
those places where poverty and social problems are so
great that the capitalist system, with its endemic production
of inequality, breaks down. It is our responsibility as
thinking people to prepare for the upcoming crises. And if
we reflect on the meanings of this metaphor, “Linux for the
operating systems of the earth”, we might see the path we
are already walking on somewhat more clearly.

Jamie King. We must remember that, unlike code, human
effort and labour are finite resources. Once a piece of code
has been produced, it has a portability that political processes
do not. For example, under the terms of the GPL
those wanting to take a project in a different direction can
simply reproduce a piece of code and do as they will with it.

The originators do not lose the code, since it is a non-rivalrous
resource. The same is not true of political processes,
where people leaving a process diminish the process insofar
as they remove labour that is not replicable. This is to speak
in very general terms, of course: some parts of the political
process are replicable, such as documents, articles and so
forth, but by and large it holds true. Human beings are not
replicable, even when they reproduce, and their labour is
absolutely finite and precious.

Brian Holmes. Yes. I used a slogan, and one which included
a brand name. Everyone should be aware that even if they all
remain open source, some of the flavours of Linux are specifically
designed to fit into capitalist production and to help make
big profits. So behind the slogan and the brand name there is
a much larger context which definitely involves compromise.
But society is generally impure, surely? And the interesting
point in the slogan is that there’s not just one operating
system. Ecological problems, problems of organic systems,
are multiple: there is human ecology, natural ecology, energy
ecology, the ecology of labour relations, there are all sorts of
whole systems in themselves, and yet they fit into the biggest
whole system of all, planet Earth, which is always beyond
us, always more than we can conceive. I definitely agree that
it is not a matter of exporting the same model everywhere,
because no one model can fit everything. But maybe it is also
good to draw specific and concrete inspiration from others…

Mayo Fuster. In free software development there is a practice
called “forking”. This expression is used to describe
a situation where the process generates a replica of itself
which becomes autonomous, and is then further modified
without conflict or opposing the “mother” project. Forking
is possible because the code is open. The software is left
open so that when a community of developers do not all
want to go in the same direction, they can diverge – in effect
split - by creating a fork, a copy of the software, and
then develop it in a different direction. At the same time
they leave open the possibility of co-operation.

I think there is a parallel between this practice of forking
and the organisational model emerging from social
movements. I found this to be the case particularly in
my experience of social movements in Barcelona. Social
movements reject the need to have permanent institutions.
Every attempt to have a permament co-ordination space in
Barcelona has failed. Instead, there is a logic of flexibilty.
There are moments of massive convergence around the
same goal – for example, actions around the World Bank
Summit, and then moments of a return to action on a
decentralised basis. This involves building new structures
appropriate to the common goal at hand rather than building
permanent structures. What makes this organisational
logic possible is effective communication tools and means
of accumulating knowledge: for example, directories
of groups so that people can contact each other when
needed rather than having to do it through centralised
structures.

Hilary Wainwright. I would like to pick up on one of the
several principles implied by these information technology
metaphors. The one that immediately strikes me is the idea
that to divide is not to take away. I wouldn’t be as cautious as
Jamie on this point. He argues that the human effort, labour
and resources involved in politics are finite in a way that the
programmes/codes are not and that, therefore, in movements
for political change to divide is more likely to be to take away.
While there is a certain logical truth to this, in reality, the more
creative our political imagination is – or, to continue the Linux
metaphor, the more we fork and collaborate to elaborate on
promising political innovations and codes - the more likely we
are as movements to reach the huge reserves of transformative
political energy that at present lie dormant.

Open software metaphors potentially help release the
political imagination from a mentality which tends to think
in terms of concentrations of power. The more we move
away from politics as a profession or a cadre activity towards
politics as a transformative process that starts from
ourselves and from people’s daily lives, the more multiple
are the possibilities. Libertarian socialists have long insisted
on the idea of many routes to a shared goal. Edward
Carpenter, a libertarian socialist from the late 19th century,
talked about people reaching the destination of socialism
by many different means. From an earlier period, the
words of PB Shelley, the English romantic poet and revolutionary,
provide inspiration for thinking about divergent and
yet empowering possibilities. He was writing ostensibly
about love but hinting at wider themes:

True love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; ‘tis like they light,
Imagination! Which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human fantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams…

The inspiration that open source software provides, not only
for recognising the possibility of many paths, but also for
thinking about them in the context of a living system, points
us towards new ways of thinking about self-regulatory
forms of interconnecton, co-ordinaton and co-operation.
Politics has for too long been stuck effectively in the metaphors
of clay, assuming that there is one form in any particular
context. Take the example of the anti-war movement
here in the UK. There is one powerful political tendency
which argues, incessantly, for demonstrations in London
and sees other activities such as actions at US bases as
divisive. If only they were guided by an open source or
a Shelleyian mentility, they would see that all these other
actions do not take away. If they are encouraged and followed
up by forms of co-operation, creative combinations
would result, activitating many energies which any one
single focus would have left untouched.

This leads me to ask about how far the metaphor takes
us. What about the processes of selection, co-ordination,
agreggation? Once the new codes, the thousand prisms and
glorious beams have revealed the possibilities, what can we
learn about these difficult questions from IT metaphors?

Christophe Aguiton. These metaphors are an interesting
stimulus and are useful because in the story of the left, of
the progressive movement, we always had metaphor.

To be very schematic: in the 19th century, for Marx, Proudhon,
or Bakunin, co-operativism was the main tool to build
socialism.You can see this in Marx’s inaugural adress for
the founding of the International Workers’ Association and
in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. Then you see a
very different vision appearing at the beginning of the 20th
century, after the collapse of the first case of capitalist
globalisation. The funniest political statement that I’ve ever
heard was written by Karl Kautsky in 1907 in a polemic
about socialism: “Socialism is the railway administration
at the scale of the society”. The metaphor of the railway
administration gives us a revealing glimpse of socialism in
the 20th century; a socialist vision for which the state was
the main tool with which to change the society. If you look
at the ideologies of the left during the 20th century: Keynesism,
Fordism or Soviet planning, they all gave the state a
central role. And now, we can use this Linux metaphor to
inspire our vision of another form of co-operative work.

The Linux metaphor is useful to highlight the contrast with
the implicit vision of 20th century socialism. It presents a
more realistic vision for the present era, since it captures
to some extent a hybrid between the three levels I have just
described – traditional forms of co-operativism, the state
and the IT-inspired forms of co-operation.We all rediscovered
co-operativism with the inspiring example of the landless
workers in Brazil. We know that we need a state for
many things, and the Linux metaphor gives an interesting
idea for a new kind of co-operation.

But let’s follow the metaphor, and enter into more detail on
this model of Linux to try to answer the question... The first
useful thing to know is what Eric Raymond talks about as the
“bazaar versus the cathedral”. In the late 1990s, he wrote an
interesting book saying that for him the bazaar worked well for
the very small-sale sharing of shareware, freeware, and other
small software; but, for big systems, like operating systems,
he thought we needed an architect to design such a large and
complex machine, like a cathedral. But working with the Linux
operating system project, he discovered that it was possible to
design large, complex systems using the bazaar logic.

The second principle that could be useful is what Marcel
Mauss called the principle of gift and counter-gift. At the
level of individual developers in the free software community,
as well as at the company level, the gift/counter-gift
logic is widespread. For example, some of the biggest users
of free software are Sun Microsystems and IBM. And
they are developing free software because they think that,
as a result, they will receive from the free software community
tools which will help them to develop cheap and
good alternatives to Microsoft. This logic of gift/countergift
is interesting in trying to understand the relationships
of individual people in development communities, such as
the Debian one (www.debian.org).

Beyond that, a third level of discussion concerns the institutions
related to Linux. In dealing with regulation, evaluation,
memory and so on, we face several problems which
are interesting but difficult. The first of these seems simple
but is actually most difficult: what kind of tool can help this
co-operation, how can the bazaar be regulated? Because
in a bazaar you have someone giving you the possibility to
have your small shop or its equivalent. Someone or some
organisation is still present to organise the space.

The second interesting issue is to explore the institutions
and governance of the Internet to see whether the logic of
horizontality is possible at all levels. There is a discussion in
France – and probably everywhere – about the governance
of the internet, about which people hold very strong opinions.
Some people are enthusiastic, others are very critical.
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
has been heavily criticised, but we should also look at
the role of IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). It is an organisation
which makes the rules for the internet, but works
in a totally decentralised system on a consensus basis.
Everyone can be part of it: companies, governments, NGOs,
individuals. At real meetings and also virtual meetings on the
internet every decision has to be taken by consensus, and
it works pretty well. But if, at the same time, you look at the
board of that organisation, its 12 members comprise eight
Americans, one Chinese person (living in California), and
two Europeans, who are also within the American research
system. There was, I think, only one other person who came
from another part of the world.

The IETF is a good example of an international institution
working well in a totally flat system. But with a common
culture… North American of course! But it is more about
a common culture than a “take over” from the US government.
More generally, it would be worth trying to see if
this kind of institution provides a good answer or not to
questions of co-orientation and regulation, questions of
governance. A classic counter-argument to the IETF model
is to say: let’s take the different nation-states and create
a sort of UN for internet. But I’m not sure that this is any
better or more “democratic”.

One final issue, which is not simple either. Even if there is
a logic of gift/counter-gift, IBM and Sun Microsystems are
clearly not Caritas International! They are big corporations,
and we have to accept that. What other answers can we
give? Influenced by the writings of Antonio Negri, there exists
this idea of a universal wage and salary for everyone and, after
that, free co-operation. But that is not so easy to achieve,
and I don’t think that it would be such a good idea anyway.

Jaume Naulert. We are talking more about similes than
metaphors. The free software way of working is now a
reality. In the last three or four years, the phenomenon of
free software communities has been exported to other
modes of cultural production, with the emergence of music,
videos and books that are all issued under Creative
Commons licences.

The use of Linux as a tag to attract people is not a bad
idea. But Linux refers to neither a particular community,
nor a particular way of being organised. Maybe free software
was the beginning (“in the beginning was the com
mand line...”) but right now, lots of programmers are talking
about free culture, where free software development is
included as one among many means of free production.
Instead of saying I’m a programmer, I’d say that I’m a free
knowledge or culture contributor.

Moema Miranda. I am worried by the overvaluation of
this dimension of our thinking on new technologies and
networks, for two main reasons. First, we could end up
mixing concepts like “movements”, “networks” and “WSF”
in a way that is not clear to me. Each of these elements,
although in dialogue, has different realities, senses and
goals. To use the metaphor of the network and the internet
as a main reference point for our reflection may be confusing,
if we do not have a mechanism to control and to include
this diversity. For example, the Hemispheric Social Alliance
(www.asc-hsa.org) is not a network or a movement similar
to the WSF. How should we deal with each element in its
specificity and use that diversity to feed our debate and our
search for greater understanding about the political facts of
our time? Another essential element is the reality of digital
exclusion... or the difficulties that many of us experience in
taking part in dialogue processes that are based above all on
the use of those tools. Prioritising this cyberspace, how can
we create links and strong articulations with other dynamics
to allow the interaction with the world beyond cyberspace?

Ángel Calle. I like the idea of using metaphors, they are
quite powerful: think of the neo-liberals’ invisible hand.
But from another perspective, we can’t be satisfied just to
have found a metaphor or a format. It is not enough simply
to think about methodological containers. We have more
resources in common, as people, upon which to base
the search for common concepts and views – language,
feelings and, above all, the format that will condition us to
define common rules: ethics.

Secondly, a co-operative system does not guarantee that
you have a global overview. We still constantly find ourselves
facing local or thematic problems in this interconnected
world.

Thirdly, how are we going to promote transformation
change? How is it going to be developed and encouraged?
We have to look very carefully at existing experiences, how
to reflect on them. For example, how and why do people
switch from Windows to Linux?

Furthermore, we should not be too enthusiastic in using one
metaphor, one language, because the world is already made
up of proposed solutions based on multiple languages. For
example, indigenous languages as they are used in Bolivia
and Venezuela are quite distant from the language adopted
by the European grassroots movements. So it is not simply a
question of establishing one language, but rather one of how
to enable translations between emancipatory languages.
Finally, we should ask how any new language is going to
work. What constitutes its common grammar?
For these reasons, I prefer to use the concept of radical
democracy, because sometimes metaphors like “Linux”
are quite entrenched in a world which is not accessible to
most people.

Dominique Cardon. I want to add a small point to Christophe’s
use of the Linux metaphor for the organisation of
social movements. One thing that strikes me when we study
the Linux community is that it’s a strange bazaar, because it
implies an individualistic contribution. There is no pre-programme
asking anybody to perform this task or contribute
to this part of the software. Everyone does what they want.
There is no prescription of order. It is really a self-organised
system, where you decide on your own basis to make this
kind of contribution to this part of the programme. The
control, integration or recognition by the community of what
you’ve done happens after you have proposed something.
So you do what you want, and everybody looks at what
you’ve done and then decides whether it’s a good solution
and should be integrated into the collective.

In a certain way we use this example when we study how
the social forums work because those are also quite a
self-organised system, where everyone comes and says “I
want to make this kind of workshop, this kind of seminar
or organise this kind of mobilisation”. There is no overaching
programme decided by a group of representatives
saying “we will talk about this subject and that subject” but
everyone is proposing different topics, agendas and campaigns.
So it’s the same kind of co-operation, where different
organisations and social movements decide what they
want to propose. But we don’t have the second part of the
Linux collaboration, which is the collective and public appreciation
and evaluation of what has been done and what
has been said at the forum. We don’t have the evaluation
which asks: what is being done? What is being proposed?
What is the agenda of all those individuals who want to
contribute to the forum? We could improve the WSFs by
having a collective reflection and memory of what has
been said,, a collective evaluation of what has been said in
order to create a common language and common acquisition
after the forum, if we are try to take the Linux form for
the organisation of World Social Forums.

In WSF debates, there is a lot of talk about the propositions
and strategies of the no-global movement. But we know
that it’s impossible to let a few people decide of thoses
strategic aspects for the whole movement. That’s the
reason why the Linux metaphor could be very helpful for
us in order to define a collective process of evaluation and
co-ordination of individual contributions. Technical tools
appear in this way, such as the WSF workspace, or some
new Web 2.0 development such as “Folksonomy”. But
technical tools are not political solutions. We also need a
common definition of processes of discussion that can be
compared to what happen in the free software community
using a consensus methodology for decision-making.

Christophe Aguiton. When I described the Linux metaphor
in terms of the principles of gift/counter-gift and the bazaar
versus the cathedral, I forgot to mention a third and important
principle: the extension of the domain of common
goods. But that is actually a key point. It is what Richard
Stallman refers to when he describes Free Software as a
common good for humanity. This idea of extending the domain
of common goods is a vital dimension of the “Linux
for the Earth” metaphor. It started with Free Software, then
extended to the work of Lawrence Lessing and others in
forging a “Creative Commons” for all intellectual creation,
artistic research, and texts. It is now becoming generalised
to address the problem of patents.

If you look at why patents were created in the 19th century,
two reasons were given at the time. The first was to
make inventions public: you designed this bottle, and you
had to let others know how you did it. But the second reason
was to protect the small designer or inventor against
the big company. If you look today, patents are used in the
opposite way. They are designed to be un-understandable
by others and are generally designed by the big companies
in order to maintain their power against small companies
or Southern countries. If you really start to talk with the
people who are working in the industry, the hard industry
not the immaterial industry, they explain now that, more
than patents, people buy expertise and consultancy. The
real price of the patent in fact is the consultancy, because
the patents are un-understandable. And probably we have
here a field of “common goods” wich could be expanded a
lot. We will not resolve everything, but it will open a lot of
paths to thinking about the idea of another society.
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