[ale] Open Source Campaigning in the Democratic Race!!

[Brian Pitts]

Tim Watts wrote:
> Maybe. But I think that kind of association muddles the meaning of open source 
> which, in the end, does a disservice to the movement. Open source is to class 
> as fruit is to paint.

Micah Sifry had a piece in The Nation a few years back where I think he 
nicely illustrates the association between open source software and open 
source politics.

"The term 'open source' specifically refers to allowing any software 
developer to see the underlying source code of a program, so that anyone 
can analyze it and improve it; better code trumps bad code, and 
programmers who have proven their smarts have greater credibility and 
status. Applied to political organizing, open source would mean opening 
up participation in planning and implementation to the community, 
letting competing actors evaluate the value of your plans and actions, 
being able to shift resources away from bad plans and bad planners and 
toward better ones, and expecting more of participants in return. It 
would mean moving away from egocentric organizations and toward 
network-centric organizing."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041122/sifry

About class: I don't think that's true in software or politics, but 
that's probably not a discussion for this list.

-Brian