wrote about the role of open source in government I’ve been thinking a bit more about it. Not open source itself but what government can learn from the open source movement. And it turns out there’s quite a lot! Open source doesn’t work because it’s free. Things are much more complicated than that. Success requires a unique set of conditions in the ecosystem and this where we can learn. I can develop an application, make it open source. I can even post the source code up in an online repository, such as Github. But that of itself isn’t enough. Where open source really takes off is when you get the combination of leadership and mass support. Leadership matters because it gives the project shape, direction and initial momentum. It also gives the project a focus. Mass support matters because to continually improve and grow you need not just a decent user base but a decent sized developer community too. This is why software like Linux, Firefox and Open Office have taken off. There’s a demand, someone with a clear vision for the project’s direction and a community of engaged developers, able and willing to contribute, modify and fix. Democracy lacks that. It’s an old world model of top down control. So perhaps the way to revitalise democracy is to mimic the open source movement. We could do this for the process or we could even try it for policy too. Now that would be an interesting experiment.]]>