The Lessons of Open Source Participation, Inclusion, Empowerment

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The Lessons of Open Source Participation,
Inclusion, Empowerment

• Antony Bryant
• Professor of Informatics
• Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

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Lessons to be learned

• From open-source software development movement
• Linus Torvalds Linux 1990s
• it shouldnt work, but it does

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The Cathedral The Bazaar
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• individual or small bands of wizards working in
  splendid isolation the entire edifice or
  product needs to be completed and fully
  guaranteed or secured prior to its release

• resembles a great babbling bazaar of differing
  agendas and approaches out of which a coherent
  and stable system could seemingly emerge only by
  a succession of miracles

Bazaar
Cathedral
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Key points

• Volunteers motivated by challenges
• Management Control are distributed and emerge
  as people take on tasks and responsibilities
• Recognize what already exists and (re-)use it
• Develop tools that others can use

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Wiki Wikipedia
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Can the bazaar model work for NGOs?

• Look for ways to harness peoples motivation
• Understand role of ICTs essential for bazaar
  model but communication has to be based on
  personal relationships and networks

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Examples from the Tsunami

• phoned warning from someone in Singapore to his
  family in India before the disaster
• the radio report was relayed by phone, and then
  spread around the village in India
• people in Tamil Nadu co-ordinating their
  communications in the aftermath
• a network developed based on the locality in
  Tamil Nadu, incorporating both ICTs and
  word-of-mouth
• Both built upon existing structures and
  relationships, together with appropriate use of
  ICTs

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from bazaar to agora
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The agora

• the space neither private nor public, but more
  exactly private and public at the same time. The
  space where private problems meet in a meaningful
  way where such ideas as the public good, the
  just society or shared values may be born and
  take shape Zygmunt Bauman

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• the pressure from the ecclesia often took the
  form of efforts to transform the agora into an
  assemblage of shops like the bazaars of oriental
  despotism
• Hannah Arendt

Agora
Ecclesia or assembly
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Grow rather than build
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Communication is about relationships
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Some questions

• Relationship between civil society and the agora?
• Can the Linux model be used by NGOs?
• Toolkit approach

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ICRC Report 2005 - extract
Looking back over the events of 2004, it is
striking how many of the years disasters could
have been avoided with better information and
communication.
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... Lets Wiki!

• This is a condensed version of a much longer
  paper, which will, I hope, lead to further work
  and collaboration
• Please contact me a.bryant_at_leedsmet.ac.uk
• Request the longer paper
• Offer comments criticisms
• Help to develop the ideas in a collaborative
  fashion agora-style