The Open Source Society (and its enemies)

Abstract

If we apply Popper’s groundbreaking theory of falsifiability and the notion of the open society to our current democratic system, we can see that there is much to be said for democratizing decision-making processes in general. The open source software community and movement is an excellent example of how a group of nonprofessionals can come together and create innovative, useful products that compete with closed or proprietary analogues, guided by an ethical commitment to keeping innovation transparent and contingent. Those same principles can help modern societies to create a better politics and a better democracy, and reach toward the goal of the open society. For instance, Iceland recently announced its intention to open up its charter to public editing and comment, reflecting a growing awareness of the role of amateurs in creating working institutions. Open source is a natural outgrowth of the same spirit reflected in Popper’s description of open societies. We argue that this spirit and its methods can be broadly applied to rulemaking in the interests of democracy, aided by technological and institutional advances in open source methods.