Boring open source

Spurred by Kieran Healy’s post here, Kevin Drum expresses his skepticism about open source, in unfortunately over-broad terms.

I think most of what he says in the post itself is wrong, or at least very much contrary to my experience; but passing over that, I want to respond on something he says later in the post’s comment thread:

Programmers who do Open Source mostly do it because they like coding and this stuff is cool. But most Open Source software is also an example of pure coding, not coding that requires involvement with an outside world of industry knowledge, marketing compromises, UI development, etc. etc. This is the boring stuff that will likely never be touched by Open Source, and my guess is that it’s at least 99% of the industry, maybe more.

It’s true that what I believe Kevin is talking about here—custom software written inside of corporations for internal use—does by some measure account for the vast majority of software written today. Saying that this kind of software is boring and that open source will never touch it, though. I couldn’t disagree more. At least on the second point. This is the kind of software I write, and I write it using entirely open source tools; and whenever I can, I give back things that I write that are of general utility to the community. Why?

What’s missing from the argument Kevin is making is the demand side of the equation. While it may be true that many programmers who do open source are only in it for recreational cool points (though that seems like a very anachronistic statement to me; I might have agreed 7 or 8 years ago), most users of open source are not. They are in it for the value. Not the “free as in beer” value of not having to pay the Microsoft/Adobe/whatever tax; the value that they derive from participation in an open market for the software they use. The user has the code, so she can, if it needs modification, either modify it herself (with sufficient knowledge), or pay someone else to modify it (with sufficient funds). Using open source means that you, the user, own the means of producing your own software. You are not at the mercy of a vendor. You are not caught in an upgrade cycle. Your sole supplier will not go out of business, or refuse to fix a bug that’s keeping you from doing what you need to do.

The fact is that getting the source with the software provides a huge value to the user over just getting the software. The bigger the user, the more they might need things to be done in a peculiar, local way, the bigger the value. The invisible hand of the market is hardly an impediment to open source; where the users and their money go, following the greater value, the programmers will follow. And, of course, many users are programmers themselves, who both gain value from the system and often add a little bit back; like a pyramid scheme, but, you know, not with money and stealing and going to jail.

One last point, for those who are wondering why I take this stuff so seriously. As I’ve argued before, wide use of open source software, especially in vital infrastructures of information exchange and democracy, is a necessary condition for our great-grandchildren having the same freedoms we enjoy today. Allowing anyone to examine (or pay a trusted third party to examine) the inner workings of the software that mediates our communications and activities will be the only way to preserve the transparency that exists today, when many of those things are still largely unmediated. When the question is not just “who watches the watchers”, but “who watches the watchmaker”, we as a society need the answer to be: I do.

Filed under: technology