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I am a strong believer in judging the present by knowing the past. In the past 25 years or so, one of the biggest trends in business and technology has been what might be called the open source revolution. The idea of his existence good job Sharing your source code may not have been well established in the eyes of many traditionalists, but the idea of leveraging existing open source software is. We have quickly reached the point where almost all important non-specialized software is open in one way or another. In all Android phones, all Mac computers, and practically all mainstream web technologies: servers, databases, browsers, and compilers; All grounds are open.
This is in stark contrast to when I was writing my dissertation entitled “Open Source Software in the Business Environment”, shortly after ESR wrote “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, when Microsoft and its massive closed source database was the undisputed leader and there were but an example or two. A serious example of open source software in commercial use.
so why? What has changed? Did people suddenly realize that the “bazaar” model, as Raymond put it, was the way to go? No, brainstorming alone rarely makes a difference, and in any case the idea of a distributed workforce, with individual interest acting on a coherent whole, is not exactly groundbreaking.
In fact, software development, as a process, has always been ideal for decentralization – the only thing that was missing was a ubiquitous communications infrastructure for developers – some way to seamlessly share code and work together easily. Not surprisingly, the rise of the Internet with its CVS, IRC, Usenet, and mailing lists coincided with the rise of open source software.
Was much saved by the previous “cathedral” model?
actually yes. It has facilitated a range of business things that we might generally consider “value plumbing”; First, it incentivized practitioners—and paid developers to spend their time and energy on the project. Second, it provided all the necessary support assets to allow development (hardware, software, tools, educational materials, etc.). Third, it served as a money bank – collecting payments from those who benefited from the work being done. In short, it took care of cash flow, and made good money for enabling and incentivizing the production of solutions.
It was initially assumed to be important, but it turned out to be less important; It turns out that people often work on software just for fun. However, we cannot deny that this “valuable plumbing” still plays an important role in human activity and service delivery.
So what does this tell us about the future?
Business, especially the service industry, has so far taken a largely ‘cathedral’ approach in commissioning, providing and managing the service that falls under this ‘value plumbing’. We may realize this through tight coordination, forced consistency, explicit top-down management, centralization and rigor. The fact that we have individual legal entities with authority and responsibility over large swaths of production output is a very clear indication of this.
eBay, as an enabling platform, has pioneered true global decentralization; It has served as a major enabler for small businesses and cottage industries throughout the developed world (not to mention a lucrative money-spinner for some of the less scrupulous operators in the Internet-enabled parts of the developing world). With the Web 2.0 platform, and mobile (which is closely related to it), we see a new category of decentralized applications. The so-called “sharing economy” is beginning to take shape with Uber, AirBnB, and TaskRabbit as notable examples. As with eBay, these operators downplay an entire class of “structural intermediaries,” replacing their “value plumber” with a large, technologically adept matchmaker.
The high-level breakdown these services entail usually comes with an occasional degree of openness (Uber’s “safe driver” fees, Airbnb’s “cleaning fees”), and it’s common to learn more about the service provider matching yours). So, what do taxi companies, hostels and the unskilled and semi-skilled labor pools have in common that make them prime examples of “decentralized services”? Where do their profits come from that allow them to transform into a scalable robot so easily?
They manage their reputation (through basic word-of-mouth, marketing, and advertising), they manage their workforce (through financing, hiring, and agreements), they manage their markets (by adapting to changing levels of supply and demand), and they manage their risks (auditing). compensation, insurance and bonds).
Although they cannot seriously claim to have created new or truly open markets, they come close. In the world of open source software, it serves as a type of shareware. It’s not exactly commercial, but it’s not really free either. There are still single entities, and intermediaries, behind the decentralized veneer, as is evident when you go to statist, social-tech laggard Germany and see that the only kind of Uber you can order is a regular, government-approved taxi.
Although these things are not yet there, these are the beginnings of a social shift in expectations; As consumers, we expect greater transparency in our service provider’s operations (from knowing the name of our driver to the exact origin of the rubber in our trainers) and greater freedom to choose our service; As individuals, we expect a greater ability to sell our skills, time, property, or potential; As businesses we expect to reduce barriers to entry into any markets in which we wish to compete. Just as with open source software, it won’t be long before legions of hobbyists (or professionals seeking to go it alone) are competing in a market-based way, on equal or greater footing with industry cathedrals. .
The idea of “bazaar services” is the final result of this social transformation. Because open source software is practically free of any barrier to entry and fluid in terms of leadership and authority, so we will find the next world of service delivery. The concerns are the same as they were 20 years ago. The answers are similar.
Software writing was the first to become fundamentally decentralized, if only because of the natural technical prowess of its people and its entirely information-based nature. With Ethereum, crypto law, Web 3.0, and the like, all aspects of services will follow the same path. The idea of a rigid organization or company will evaporate, and the true essence of human interaction patterns will remain, controlled only by openness and theoretical information mathematics. Whereas once the “interaction mode manager” or “value plumber”—or “firm” for short—subjects to laws regarding the emergent behavior he or she was enabling, the strict legality of the emergent behavior will become increasingly less important as it becomes more pluralistic. It is uncontrollable with no entity, legal or otherwise, coordinating or benefiting from it.
We will begin to see a world free of middlemen, intermediaries and trusted authorities, where services are not only provided, but also advertised, found, matched and insured, directly from service provider to consumer. Patterns of interaction arise and persist not through a clumsy and inefficient legal system and slow and rigid institutional rules, but through the inherently adaptive emergent effects of flexible, agile, and direct economic incentives. This is where we’re headed, and if it performs as well as open source software, it certainly won’t come fast enough.
Can we profit from this new social model? My opinion is a resounding yes. Profits will come, as always, from serving (perceived) human needs or providing efficiency gains to those who are incentivized to recognize and propagate them. But the types of profitable models are not yet clear. Don’t expect a for-profit entity to look like anything else now, or you’ll be stuck like those who were looking for the next Microsoft in 2000 and putting their money into VMLinux and RedHat. What we think are great differentiators now will be commoditized in 20 years, just like operating systems and browsers were in 1995.
Understanding where these differences might lie first requires understanding what is to be commoditized. Some thoughts to ponder: What if the “good” turns out to be a digital marketplace, completely seller-neutral, open and trustless? “Value Plumbing” is ubiquitous, and the business logic is constantly evolving while remaining ready to enable everyone, whoever they are, to participate in… Bazaar Services.
4/5/2015 Addition: After visiting again writer bI must apologize for misusing Raymond’s analogies; The original work was about distinguishing between traditional business practices (mostly commercial software, but including some open source software such as GNU) and decentralized business practices (what we now tend to think of as open source software development), rather than strict ownership. / Commercial for money. In cautious terms, the idea of decentralization in software development is prevalent and associated with open source development. Interestingly, even apart from OSS, some Agile methodology (I’m thinking of SCRUM) can be said to join this general trend towards self-organization, decentralization and anarcho-bazaar operation.
