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January 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Open source: pragmatism buys in

TAGS: Open Source

I just finished reading Richardson's exceptional biography of William James. I found the reading exhilarating, because James is so focused on action, not theory. Whenever I finish a chapter I find myself energized to go out and do things.

I know I find open source in everything, but it seems to me to be a perfect rendering of James' pragmatism. It's not about the theory behind open source that matters. The only thing that matters is the output. That output makes me think that open source is "true" in the Jamesian sense. From "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth:"

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we can not. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as....

The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

Why do I believe open source is the best way to develop, distribute, and support software? Because it works. Some may answer, "But look at Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, etc. Surely they "work" in the sense that they have been massively successful." To this I concur, but with a caveat. Or, rather, with a statement: "at a given moment in time."

That is, the end-to-end proprietary model makes sense, but only in the early phases of a market's growth. Those of you who have read Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma will recognize this principle. It remains true just long enough to become false. Soon into the market's evolution, the market shifts to embrace heterogeneity. Those that cling to end-to-end proprietary ecosystems eventually fail through the exact same mechanisms that made them initially so successful.

Early on, in short, a market begs for clarity over excellence. As it matures, it demands excellence (and retains clarity through standards). In software, we are shedding the proprietary phase and moving into a phase focused on product excellence, increasingly delivered through open source.

The problem with this progression for the Proprietary Bloc, again, is not that they don't see the new "truth." They do. It's that they cannot do anything about it in light of their old truths. In James' words:

[T]he greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths. Truths have once for all this desperate instinct of self-preservation and of desire to extinguish whatever contradicts them. ("What Pragmatism Means." 43.)

Let us be clear. Whatever the merits of proprietary software, they are purely vendor-favoring. There is no customer reason to make software proprietary. None. There is no customer benefit that attaches to proprietary software. There is only a vendor's ability to temporarily monopolize a piece of software and thereby profit from it.

But if I'm right, open source is a far more efficient way to profit from code. You don't need to believe me, however. The truth of what I say (or the falsehood) will demonstrate itself in the market. As James says, "Truth happens to an idea." As more and more open source companies and projects flourish; as more and more investment flows in; and as CIOs happily spend on open source in increasing amounts, you'll know that it's "true."

(You may have noticed that all of the above is already happening to an explosive degree. Truth happens.)

Posted by Matt Asay on January 28, 2007 03:37 PM

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