Open Source Methods Useful Way Beyond Software

Tom Steinberg writes "Former head of policy at the British Prime Minister's office, Geoff Mulgan, has co-authored a paper on uses of Open Source methods in arenas far beyond the normal Sourceforge universe. The paper is jointly written with Tom Steinberg, head of UK civic hacking fraternity mySociety and explores the use of open source methods to improve academic peer review, drafting of legislation and even media regulation."

Academic Peer Review

[gowen]

One problem with an Open Source approach to modifying academic papers, is that the original author has a strong interest in maintaining sole authorship : for better or worse, their future appointments pretty much depend on publication history.

Open source and human nature

[Flywheels of Fire]

I think the "Open Source" model can be extended to all aspects of society. But it requires a paradigm shift in the way the world works.

If you take the cases of Linux or Wikipedia, arguably two of the most popular "open source" products, there are far more users that contributors.

Human nature is such that we try to do the least amount of work to achieve maximum effect. Humans are essentially greedy.

Open source model does nto work well with this inherent greediness. IF one day we humans change our intrinsic nature, open source model might well replace the current individualist/capitalist model.

Academic research itself _is_ ...

[slabbe]

a lot like open source. And has been so for quite some time. I publish my results, stating what I have been doing and precisely how. If I can as many other people as possible to use my results and ideas, I will gain respect in the scientific community (a lot of references). Regarding the publication process, open archives such as arxiv have been gaining in popularity for a long time, see e.g. http://arxiv.org/show_monthly_submissions [arxiv.org]

Re:In a democracy/republic

[$1uck]

Go to your court house and ask for a copy of building codes (for wiring your house etc). Don't be suprised to find that codes (laws actually) are owned/copyrighted by a firm. So no the laws are not "open source."

Re:In a democracy/republic

[Frabcus]

The problem in the UK is that there is no freely available version of consolidated legislation. You can get the acts from the parliament website, but they are just patch files written in English. There is no free version with the patches applied. And it goes back centuries, a real mess.

OS Informational Database

[Anonymous Monkey]

This reminds me of an old car commercial I saw (I think it was BMW). An older German engineer was being interviewed and he said "we developed and patented crumple zones" then some one else said but all cars have them now. His reply was "We never enforced the patent, some things are too important not to share,"

What inventions do slashdoters think are too important not to share?

Also, a tangent, I think an online wikpidia like open cooking database would be a cool project.

Re:20 days late

[CousinLarry]

no, if you actually read the page you'll see that the PDF is free and a printed version costs money to cover costs.

Source??? What source??

[SuperDuperMan]

Open Source means open SOURCE CODE... come up with a different term for Open Ideas. Perhaps Open Ideas... Open Source when used for anything other than source code is a poor bastardization of the term.

I'm glad when the airplane was invented the term air didn't become so popular that cars, boats, televisions all had to have the word air in them.

wow

[mattyrobinson69]

jesus christ. i have to say, this is quite possibly the best day of slashdot news ever (and ive been too busy to read most of the day - its 17:47 here).

microsoft to support linux in virtual server
major euro politician to stand against software patents
india to scrap software patents
torvalds finishes new versioning system
dvd players being able to skip those bloody adverts

best...day...(in technology news)....ever

Re:Natural greediness

[IamTheRealMike]

Disagree - if that were true, nobody would work on software that didn't obviously lead to reward. But people hack on open source games like bzFlag that'll never get them a consultancy gig or a book. Do you think Stallman was motivated by kudos? No.

I don't think it's worth speculating too much about the motivations people have for working on free software. For some it's just fun, for others it's an ego trip, for others it's their job and for yet others it's a war against corporate power and the ills of society. It's better to concentrate on the lessons to be learned from the movement, which is what the guys in the article are doing. Good for them, I say.