Open-souce is good enough for the Economist, what about the public sector?

Saturday, March 18. 2006

Even the venerable Economist is jumping on the online collaboration bandwagon, saying 'The "open-source" process of creating things is quickly becoming a threat -- and an opportunity -- to businesses of all kinds.' Though expressing worry about how innovative and sustainable these process can be and how to assure quality and handling of intellectual property, the The Economist is clearly taken.

The article correctly states that open source products (software and otherwise) are often produced by professional teams working on the clock in carefully thought-out management structures and for-profit. The article highlights open source practices not just in the software industry (where Linux, Apache, MySQL, and others have already demonstrated huge value), but in other sectors as well including content (Wikipedia) and biotechnology (CAMBIA).

It tries to highlight the risks of the approach by pointing out that many open source projects don't take off (referring to the the 130,000 projects at SourceForge) and how openness risks vandalism (trotting out Wikipedia jousting with Seigenthaler). However, closed projects also often fail and face disaffected or incompetent employees -- these problems are just hidden from the public.

Congratulations to The Economist for recognizing what is becoming one of the most powerful ways to organize labor since the assembly-line -- open, online collaboration. However, the focus on "business of all kinds" leaves out another great opportunity -- online collaboration for the public good. Open source, creative commons licensing, and shared effort offer huge potential to government and non-profits. Unfortunately, these sectors have been slow to adopt new approaches.

In general, public sector projects that develop software (including websites), conduct research, collect data, create content, etc. should consider using open source processes to generate even more value.

Posted by Dave Witzel in Technology at 17:37 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Influence covers innovations in communication, Internet technology and strategy to generate influence on important public policy issues. Chris Wolz manages this blog with the help of his colleagues at Forum One Communications, a web strategy/technology firm in the Washington DC area.