The Relationship Between FOSS and Democracy

An anonymous reader writes "Free software is about freedom. So it shouldn't be any surprise that the ideals behind the free software movement have spread to the place where freedom is most affected: government. The old definition of e-democracy is, basically, 'using computers in politics and governance.' So a politician sending out a batch e-mail is e-democracy. The new movement is about removing the power from politicians and making governance collaborative. The analogy to FOSS is remarkable: think of the current governments as the old guard computing companies, and the collaborative governance movement as the geeks with crazy notions of a different way of organizing things. FOSS looked like an impossible pipe-dream when it started. Tell that to the Apache group today."

Re:Who's going to clean toilets and guard prisoner

[grcumb]

The "point" to me sounded like a bunch of bullshit cyberspeak about how the internet is going to turn government into a big drum circle where we all join hands and sing songs of peace and love.

I'll be the first to admit that a lot of Progressive activism does suffer from its (often impractical) idealism. That said, the assertion that the Internet, with its FOSS-style approach to standards and its preference for unmediated communication, really is a democratising force.

The problem is, the powers-that-be are becoming aware of this fact, and they don't like it. I may be getting cynical in my old age, but recently all I've been seeing is how susceptible to coercion modern networks are. I've written a series of newspaper columns [imagicity.com] and blog posts on the topic. Here's the basic take-away:

We can take two closely related lessons from this:

• Centrally controlled communications resources are, in times of social crisis, extremely vulnerable to compromise; and
• Information networks that rely on the ‘End to End Principle’ – that is, networks that join two end points without particularly caring how those two points connect – are still subject to compromise, but the damage can be mitigated either by routing around trouble spots or by connecting to different end points.

In short, the core design principle of the Internet, the concept of the ‘end to end’ network, is inherently democratic, empowering the individual at the expense of central control.

Will the revolution be twittered? If Egypt is any example, it's increasingly likely that it won't. That said, Internet protocols and FOSS philosophy still hold some important ground. They can be used to organise groups and share experience/intelligence. Not all hope is lost.

Re:And in other ways...

[Anonymous Coward]

FOSS looked like an impossible pipe-dream when it started.

It is utterly erroneous to think that FOSS started after entrenched companies proprietary closed software. With the original IBM PC, you could purchase the technical manual and it included the entire POST in assembly language. In the 70s and through to the mid-90s, it was common for software to be provided as source code. This was mainly because there was no hegemony among operating systems. As C matured (even before it was an accepted ANSI standard), and with the standardization ofr Fortran77, this mode of software distribution flourished. The source code was much smaller than a binary (important in the days of floppy disks and dial-up networking) and was able to support multiple operating system configurations. Many operating systems included their kernel source to support recompiling to take advantage of specific features or improve performance. The software could be compiled for whatever platform it was needed.

Closed source became viable only when a few operating systems became dominant and the graphical user interface eased computer use by less specialized individuals. This was enforced by profit motives in the operating system producers who began to charge for compilers. Most forms of Unix included a C compiler with the distribution and even PC-DOS had DEBUG.EXE which could compile assembly. These fell away in favor of greatly superior tools that were priced beyond what the feasibility of a hobbyist.

This is one of the foresights that make Stallman great. He predicted the removal of such tools from the public realm and actively fought, via the FOSS movement, to prevent it. In doing so, he helped to maintain the vibrant growth in software capability.