Open Source Political Strategy: Principles To Follow From "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"
Politics is open source strategy. Understanding the principles of open source software will give you a better understanding of open source political strategy.
“The Cathedral and the Bazaar” was a book written by Eric Raymond, a software developer and open source advocate who was popular among CypherPunks. “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” was a very influential book among the open source community, being cited as an inspiration for many other works.
The Cathedral represents the sphere of private, closed door development. The Bazaar represent the sphere of open source development.
The book has a list of rules that Raymond believed were essential for any good open source developer. However, these rules should not just be thought of as principles of building open source software, but open source anything!
Any modern political movement, if it is truly grassroots, can be thought of as an Open Source Movement. I took Raymond’s principles and applied them to political movements.
Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.
Political movements are no different. If you see something you want to fix, or that you know you can fix, build the tools to fix it. The tools could be anything from a consulting firm, to a non-profit, to a Super PAC. Have a full toolbox!
Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
Be adaptable at all times. Adapt your movement to the current wave of hype. Political movements have been built before. Reuse what has already been done effectively.
If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.
As a movement leader or as a new movement all together, there will be problems you have, and problems you experience that no one else will have experienced.
This means there are few people to rely on for advice. That is because unique problems come to unique people. Anyone starting a movement should expect this, especially if it’s a movement no one has ever seen before.
When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
Finding competent people with the same passion as you is one of the hardest tasks in the world. Building the right team is harder than building the right product. People will always matter more than technology. Know when your time has come to step down and when to bring in fresh perspectives. If you want your movement to succeed, knowing when to move on is key.
Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.
Treat people who aren’t your customers as customers as well. Just because someone is outside your political movement doesn’t mean their opinion isn’t valid. You need people outside your bubble to see things you are blind to. This often included opposing movements.
Release early. Release often. Listen to your customers(voters).
Let your movement know your next plan of action. Even before it’s solidified. Spread the word of what your thinking next so you can get early feedback. Earlier feedback means better outcomes.
Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
Share your problems with the community. Decentralize your problem solving through outsourcing it quickly and often. Let the movement build consensus around the next initiative.
Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.
Solid foundations with bad execution are always better than bad foundations with solid execution.
If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
The first people to join your movements are the most valuable. They are normally the most passionate group, willing to stick around when no one else is. They are almost always the people who will put in the work to help you lead, and give you critical feedback. Prioritize early followers voices.
The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
Let your voters drive your movement. The difference between being a boss and being a leader is a leader listens to his followers. When developing strategies to obtain objectives, a leader has be a filter for his community. This means trying to figure out which ideas from the crowd make the most sense.
Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.
In other words, don’t be afraid to start over and re-strategize. I had to do this with my organization when it was first founded. We initially wanted to be an NRA/Green Peace like organization, focusing on voters. This strategy was a huge failure at the time. Recognizing this, I immediately pivoted to businesses.
Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away. (Attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
Never stop figuring out ways to make your movement more efficient in its goal. A movement by definition is NEVER done. It must ebb and flow. Its communication must always become better.
Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.
Experiment with multiple tools and multiple strategies. The best one will aid you in parallel goals the movement has. Discovering those tools and strategies is what makes certain movements better than others. (Notice how Occupy Wall Street and Kony2012 quickly fizzled out?)
When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.
In short, if your movement is not easy to replicate, it needs to be simplified. A true grassroots movement should be able to be copied by anyone at anytime. This is what makes grassroots so powerful. If this is not the case, you need to simply your movement. This normally means making your talking points and objectives easily understood.
A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.
If you plan to use asymetrical information in an asymetrical way, make sure it is actually information no one else has. Otherwise, redo your strategy.
To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
Don’t solve problems you don’t want to solve. Leave that for someone else. You will only solve a problem if it is something that reaches deep into your soul. From there, the passion to create a solution will drive you down paths you would have never thought of.
Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one.
Having decentralized leader ship is okay as long as there is good communication. Communication networks are key with any grass roots movements. If there is no communication network, than the grass roots model is a bad one.
Conclusion
There are experts in all fields. Most experts follow a similar logic, and that logic can be applied to anything. Building political movements is no different then developing software, building a house, or painting a beautiful work of art.
Raymond’s principles can be applied to anything in life, but they are especially useful when applied to political movements.