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The Open Source Name Game

Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet has proposed another name for open source. He wants to call it "democratic software." Me, I'd rather it just be good software, no matter what label we put on it or what development method we use.

Here's how he put it:

Open source is the democratic process applied to software, just as Wikipedia is the same process applied to the collection of information. ... Open source offers true democracy, more like that of a Vermont town meeting than the U.S. Congress. Everyone has a voice. Everyone can see the code, edit the code, fix the code. Official changes go through an official process, but that process too is open and transparent.

The problem is that open source development is not a democracy.

The word "democratic" has been beaten out of shape by exactly this kind of misuse, so much so that I hesitate to apply it to anything except in the narrowest and most precise context possible.

In a democracy, you vote for who gets to implement policy, and also sometimes on which policies to implement. I think it should be the other way around, personally -- we should vote for or against the policies first and then choose who to implement them, but that's another essay for another venue.

A democracy means, in theory, that your vote counts no matter who or what you are. Your vote gets tallied, period, even if you vote for a complete dimbulb. In open source, you have to prove that your submissions mean something, whether through the quality of the code or the depth of your insight. It's meritocratic, not democratic -- something Dana himself points out, which makes his toting of the word all the more mistaken. (For that matter, what's wrong with the word "meritocratic"? Maybe it sounds too close to "elitist"?)

I suppose Dana's use of "democratic" is meant to imply nothing more than the idea that anyone can join the gang, but that's precisely why I deplore its use here: it's inherently imprecise. It doesn't describe what actually happens. It gives a rough (and in my opinion misleading) analogue for it, and the word brings with it too much of the wrong kind of baggage.

If I had to pick a new term, I'd go with publicly developed software. It means what it says: this software was developed in the public eye. It doesn't have the instant flags-and-apple-pie cachet of democratic, but at this point I'm so weary (and wary) of the emotionalism that goes hand-in-hand with so much of the discourse on this subject, that anything to help tone things down and make them a little less fervent is okay with me. There are ways to sweeten the attraction of open source without the cost of doing further damage to the language.

Next week: we ditch "free as in speech / beer" and find a replacement. Any suggestions?

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