A ‘Vote’ for Open Source
Posted on November 9, 2009 by Ken Udas
It is true that much about the value of open source software, and openness more generally seems counter intuitive. I assume that this has something to do with being conditioned to think in terms of scarcity rather than abundance. I suppose also that’s why we hoard things and that a large part of our behavioral economics is about creating conditions in which the value for something that we have is increased by artificially controlling supply.
Common wisdom has us believing that without the appropriate incentives to bring a product to market our market would be more or less empty. The incentive is money and how can anybody make money without having a monopoly? In the case of software and other intellectual and cultural assets we have enforced incentive systems based on creating an artificial monopoly through the use of restrictive intellectual property law. Does this approach make sense? Absolutely, after all, common wisdom is by definition intuitive, and we are comfortable with intuitive things, and why worry about things with which we are comfortable? Generally speaking, I don’t think that it is healthy to be too comfortable for too long, which is why I really like it when we are surprised by the occasional wisdom of counter intuitive behavior. The trick is finding areas in which unconventional thought yields dividends because of changes in our environment.
I know that the economics of information is subject to debate. On one hand we can argue that innovation requires incentives and the artificial monopolies created by IP provide just the right thing, while on the other we could point out that all of our innovations are simply modifications of other ideas (ideas built on other ideas), and if you restrict the free flow of ideas there will be less innovation, because there will be fewer and less diverse building blocks to work from. This being the case, economics, innovation, and money making aside, it seems obvious though that being overly open when security is at stake is simply a bad policy. After all, that is just common sense. Closed systems are more secure and safer than open ones, right?
In a meeting a while back, a colleague of mine who had recently been challenged about the reliability, security and stability of open source software solutions – by a skeptical CIO – asked me what I thought and pointed me to a great example of a national voting system used in Australia. He said if I looked in to it, I’d find a remarkable and classic case study of how and why open source works. In addition to taking a look, I mentioned that I thought that the Kiwis had been at it for at least as long with their national elections and domain management software.
While I’m not sure this is the identical solution that was mentioned, this November, 2003, article by Kim Zetter in Wired magazine entitled, “Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting” is, in fact, an amazing validation of open source. I know that the whole idea of opening up code for all to see is counter intuitive to code security. It is kind of like being told to put your freezing hand in a bucket of cold water to thaw. It is more logical to favor hot water, but it isn’t true.
According to Phillip Green, an electoral commissioner in Australia involved in the open source solution, it was important that everyone had a chance to see every line of code so they posted it to the Internet for public scrutiny.
“We’d been watching what had happened in America (in 2000), and we were wary of using proprietary software that no one was allowed to see,” he said. “We were very keen for the whole process to be transparent so that everyone — particularly the political parties and the candidates, but also the world at large — could be satisfied that the software was actually doing what it was meant to be doing.”
Turns out, someone at the Australian National University discovered and reported the most serious flaw. But that was fixed, of course, and if you’re able to read the whole two pages of Ms. Zetter’s story you’ll learn how reliable and stable the ultimate solution has become, how incredibly fast it was developed, and how it has helped Australia avoid the kind of voting snafus we can’t seem to fix completely here in the US.
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