What makes open source work? One is that it is directed from out of individual initiative. No one is top down organizing, passing out tasks, looking over your shoulder to see if you are doing it right. What works is what you judge to be right and what you create. Two is that it is a cooperative art. The whole, in the end, is really much greater than the sum of the parts. Three is that it is a gift, free - no one is trying to get rich or gain power or whatever. Four is that it is outside the box. What is done in open source isn't connected to the past, but is really based upon the future. We imagine what is the best and then make it happen. Lets translate that into politics.

In politics, as ordinary citizens, we get to do two basic things - complain and vote. If we step outside the box, we might remember that ordinary citizenship is the primary power, from which all other power is derived. We need to think about this from that position of power - we are the bosses. We say what the ideals are to be and where the ship of state is to be going. Then we need to do this for itself, not because we are going to gain something for ourselves, but as a gift to the whole people. Now to make this a cooperative act, to make the determination of the ideas a true art, we have to do it engaged with each other. True, what we say and do and think, this we draw out of ourselves, out of our own heart, but this saying and doing and thinking from the heart, we do that together.

We don't form a political party and say we have the answer, do it our way, and then go out and steal an election or two. We make the ideal element of our politics out in the open, together, just because it is the right thing to do.

Now, this being the case, if I were to write about this from an historical and political perspective, instead of calling it "hacking politics" I would call it Citizen Governance - the future of the republic form of government. Originally posted October 21, 2002