Can we really be open?

Recently, there was an article in Wired magazine, “Clark Campaign Going Open Source”, http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61723,00.html which caught my attention. I have been very active with DeanSpace, and I feel strongly that Open Source campaigns are crucial to revitalizing democracy in the United States.

I sent an email to the various DeanSpace people, other technologists involved in the Dean Campaign asking for their comments about working together with Clark’s TechCorp. I posted a comment about in my DailyKos Diary, http://aldon.dailykos.com/story/2003/12/29/13159/817. I also sent a copy to the email address listed in the Wired article for the Clark TechCorp people.

I must say, I have been disappointed by the majority of the responses I have received. Perhaps the most disappointing has been the attacks on General Clark that several people sent me. General Clark is a fine candidate, and I will gladly support him if he wins the nomination. I do not think we should be attacking candidates like General Clark, or his supporters.

A second concern that was brought up, was that we don’t have time right now to focus on this. I think this is a very valid and important concern. I am spending as much time as I can working on developing new tools for the campaign, helping set up websites, attending steering committee meetings, and even finding a moment to write a blog entry every now and then. However, by thinking about what we are doing and where we are going, we can make development decisions that will be more likely to interoperate with, and be usable by people developing tools for other campaigns.

Another concern was that we need to be careful not to embarrass the campaign. After all, what would the media do if they found that people from competing campaigns were working together to make each other’s campaign more effective? The only examples of people from different campaigns working together recently have been what appears to be coordinated attacks on Dean by some of his competitors. It could be highly embarrassing if people worked together to improve this country even if they are on different sides of a campaign.

Some people suggested that we shouldn’t be worrying about what people will use after the primary. Their suggestions were that the DNC will have its own software. Perhaps. But we should be developing our tools in such away that even the DNC will be able to benefit from what we are developing. We need not only to have Dean software and Clark software interoperate, but also DNC software and who knows what other software.

One person suggested that we shouldn’t worry about it because Dean will end up having most of the delegates and it will be up to his supporters to select the software to use. They will obviously choose DeanSpace.

I must admit, that this sounds like a likely scenario, but there is a certain arrogance about this that I find uncomfortable. I am also not sure that selecting the software based on whose candidate wins a race is the best way of developing the best software. Granted, this isn’t really that different from what often happens in corporate America. However, we should be seeking to get the best software through cooperation and interoperability, not the force of who wins the nomination.

However, I am not the only person who has been interested in this news about Clark’s TechCorp. David Winer wrote a fairly cranky post about Dean and Clark’s software development, http://archive.scripting.com/2003/12/24#editorial.

To a certain extent, Winer has an important point to make. It isn’t good if campaigns take unfair advantage of volunteers to get the software the campaign needs. To the extent that people are writing software for a specific candidate, this is a campaign contribution. I gladly make that contribution. I don’t feel bad about that contribution, nor do I believe that my contributions end up hurting the software industry.

As a matter of fact, to the extent that we generate good software that gets campaigns using the internet more, and gets more people involved in social networking and politics, it actually helps the software industry. I won’t expand on this. I believe that Jon Lebkowsky has already addressed this more satisfactorily than I would in his blog, http://www.weblogsky.com/archives/000024.html

So, the challenge remains, can Dean supporters, Clark supporters, perhaps even supporters from other campaigns collaborate in Open Source politics? I hope so, and I continue to look for others to join in.