| Open Source Governance |
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| politics and technology | |
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Open source governance advocates the application of the philosophies of the Free Software Movement to Democratic principles, to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of new policy as with a Wiki document. Legislation is democratically opened to the general citizenry in this way, allowing Policy development to benefit from the collected wisdom of the people as a whole. Some envision it as a post-national " Virtual State " governing structure, where policy-setting is decoupled from territorial management. In any event, the idea demonstrates the still untapped potential of how open source philosophies can merge with government. The core principle is the concept of a "central codebase" in the form of a set of policies that are maintained in a public registry and that are ''infinitely reproducible''. " Distributions " of this policy-base are periodically released for use in localities, which can apply "patches" to customize them for their own use. Localities are also able to cease subscribing to the central policy-base and "fork" it or adopt someone else's policy-base. In effect, the government stems from emergent cooperation and self-correction among members of a community. As the policies are put into practice in a number of localities, problems and issues are identified and solved, and where appropriate communicated back to the core. Because so much information must be gathered for the overall decision-making process to succeed, however, technology may provide important forces leading to the type of empowerment needed for participation in this kind of government, especially those technological tools that enable community narratives and correspond to the Accretion of knowledge. SEE ALSO
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