Open Source Explains It All

Back in 2005 I was asked to take over a new “open source” beat for ZDNet.

It turns out to have been the most important story of my life. And yours.

Open source is software based on the radical idea that the more eyes you get on code, the better it will be. Without getting too deep into the weeds here, it works.

The benefits of open source, however, flow mainly to its users. In the old proprietary model, they flowed to developers. Microsoft and (especially) Oracle fought it so fiercely. They saw the “little guys” as ganging up to steal their competitive advantage. Microsoft finally surrendered, building a network of cloud data centers that has made it the second most-valuable company in the world. Oracle is worth barely one-tenth as much.

All of America’s biggest companies are now built on the open source idea. Apple built its cloud on open source. So did Google, and Amazon, and Facebook. Facebook extended this into hardware with its Open Compute Project. Netflix extended it into networking with Open Connect.

But open source relates to more than software, hardware, or technology.

The Internet is making the world an open source project. Free software, cheap phones and wireless data mean people in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa can be part of the global conversation, and the global market. The number of people in absolute poverty fell by 1 billion in the last two decades, before the pandemic.

The result has been economic and political disruption.

All the start-ups that arbitrage government power, from Uber to Bitcoin, are built using open source tools and cloud networks. Trump’s power was built using this cheap networking. Our problems today are because the folks who built this new medium take no responsibility for it. As a result, others assume the responsibility, without the interest of anyone else at heart.

The abuse of these resources by Tech Bros and political opportunists is all liberals can talk about. They fret about it and assume the worst. But these problems are correctable. All it really takes is owners acting in the public interest.

If lies can be tamped down, open source is the secret sauce that will win America the future. Democracy is open source applied to politics. It’s more hands on the ship of state. It’s consensus and local bug-fixing.

In contrast we have China, which still operates on a proprietary model. Only the Chinese Communist Party has its eyes on the governing code. A few leaders at the top are assumed to be all knowing, all seeing, completely in control.

But this doesn’t work in an open source world. China has enormous problems, from pollution and disease to debt and inequality. The people at the bottom who might solve this can’t be heard. The solutions that might otherwise bubble up can’t be implemented. Only the leader matters.

Xi Jinping is Larry Ellison. He’s going to fail. He’s going to fall. Open source guarantees it.

Americans need to understand that. We don’t have to fight China. Just compete, let everyone have access to the code of governing, the code of the economy, the code of the culture, and he’ll go down.

As I learned over a decade ago, the proprietary model just can’t compete.