Brian Behlendorf vs. Natalie Portman
One of the great things about being a University student is that you get to see remarkable people. Today I got the chance to attend talks by both Brian Behlendorf and Natalie Portman. While both talks were insightful, the speakers kind of have different profiles and backgrounds 
so I thought it would be interesting to draw parallels and differences between the subjects.
Both speakers actually aim at making the world a better place, albeit in a different way. Behlendorf advocates for open source and collaborative development as a means to empower the masses, and Natalie Portman is an ambassador for a microfinance organization that “promotes micro-lending to help finance women-owned businesses in poor countries“.
I claim there are a couple of parallels between both activities. Microfinance is a form of collaboration if you come to think about it, where lenders and borrowers come together to agree on rules and future development. And open source software - well, at least the one that’s free - enables computer users with little to no resources (e.g., students) to have access to software, the same way microfinance enables poor people to have access to banking services. Moreover, as Brian Behlendorf stated it, collaborative development is hardly limited to software. His company CollabNet built a collaborative system for HP’s electronic circuits. Why not build one for microcredits? Finally, we all know collaborative development implies organizational tools and communication means between developers. Well, microcredit implies easier communications means too, and a great example of that is that a microfinance company recently decided to give a cellular phone to every one of its clients.
Thus, the goal of these non-traditional business practices is to create a virtuous circle, where collaboration sheds more social and economical efficiency, which in turns sheds more collaboration.
Besides these analogies which might sound a bit rhetorical, there’s something that I feel the open source community and the software industry at large could benefit from, and that I’m going to try and articulate. What’s truly innovative about microfinance organizations is that economic and social development is created from below, in the sense that some responsability is given to the very poorest on the planet. This is why the educational value of microcredit is huge. In comparison, current software collaborative development is much less accessible. Barriers to entry to a collaboration project are very high, and the meritocracy behind most organizations can turn into an elitist system, where protagonists really come from the top tiers of academia and corporate research. Since collaborative development is reserved to people that are already literate, there is no real educational value for developers who are either in training, or from parts of the world other than the US. That may explain why outside of the Silicon Valley - as a caricature - most of the web, for example, is 3 or 4 years behind.
That concludes my long post today about a topic that’s undeniably related to collaborative mapping apps such as MapMyGlobe. I’ll end up saying I am grateful to the speakers for inspiring me, both of them - although one of them is somewhat sexier, but I’ll let you decide who …
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:17 am
I would like to acknowledge Jonathan Schwartz, whose many ideas inspired me while writing this post. He actually spoke about the similarities between Open Source and microfinance-related strategies aimed at increasing the market’s transparency and thus increasing the social and economical efficiency. He also mentioned the name of the bank that’s giving away cell phones to its clients, but I can’t seem to remember it
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Yeah, I’ll definitely not opine on the “who’s sexier” question.
I definitely agree that both microfinance and Open Source software are about creating virtuous circles, albeit in very different ways. There is even a very interesting intersection: microfinance institutions are in desparate need of better software for managing their activities, and there is an active effort at the Grameen Foundation called “Mifos” designed to serve this very purpose. Anyone with an interest in both fields should check them out, they’re hiring too!
But, I am unclear on what you mean by comparing the “educational value” of microfinance and Open Source software. Universities in Spain, India, Brazil, Ghana, and no doubt many other places are using open source software as source material in software development classes, or writing their own. Software packages like Moodle, Sakai, and OpenSRS are helping schools of all types manage cirricula, attendance/grades/classroom assignments, and other facets of school life. The “One Laptop Per Child” initiative not only uses Linux as the underlying operating system, its interface encourages experimentation and remixing.
I can see your point that there are many more people who might be able to take out a microfinance loan than might be able to, say, contribute a patch to an Open Source project. There is definitely a threshold to cross - one must have regular access to some sort of computing device in order to have the time, let alone the interest, in learning to program - and while cell phones are a terrific way to get technology and access in the hands of the poor, it alone is not the kind of tool that would enable someone to become a programmer.
On the other hand, there is still a tremendous portion of the developing world who today have access to such devices or will soon; from inexpensive laptops to cybercafes or village internet access stations, or schools. Furthermore, Open Source can provide tremendous *leverage* - once that threshold is crossed, there’s nothing else in the way of becoming the next Linus Torvalds, except your one’s own time and interest.
The most compelling example of what’s possible here may be Extremadura, Spain. See http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/view.html?pg=4 for a rundown - the poorest state in Spain used Open Source software to lift themselves up in many ways.
It’s going to be fun to see where this all goes.
Brian