Open Journal Montreal

Last question for the BillMonk, for now:

How do the ideas behind BillMonk relate to open source?
First, it’s worth noting a literal answer. BillMonk is built using entirely open-source components. Debian GNU/Linux, Apache, Postgresql, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, etc… all lovely chunks of software, all open source. We heart the open source community, and are pondering releasing parts of our in-house technologies under an OSS license, like a Ruby client-side graphing library or a customer support queue management system.

The BillMonk idea involves a web of trust between friends, but I think that’s as far as I’d go towards linking it to open source ideas. We do hope to launch web services soon, which “liberates” your information so it’s not just controlled by just our application, e.g. if you want to write a better Java app to enter your bills, more power to you. Again, that only really skims the surface of what it means to be Open.

Our general approach has been informed by the open source movement, but more because it’s just what makes sense for growth. Be zero-cost so you can spread; trust that good ideas spread on their own merits; try to be transparent to establish trust (the “Audit” section of a bill; our fairly candid responses to user contacts); make one tool that solves one thing well (that’s more of a Unix-think reclaimed by Web 2.0).

I’m afraid I don’t really have a great answer to your question, sorry. Feel free to follow up!

I think this is a pretty great answer, actually, it hits on a bunch of the features of the technological pragmatism that makes open source successful in a viral kind of way. I held on to this question for a while, rolling over what all I’d think of following up on, but I’d also been thesising hard all week and my brain’s a bit fried. ..

I do, however, think there’s also something suggestive, for a wider thinking about open source, in the way BillMonk pools and makes visible social currency moving through your networks. It is, as Chuck mentionned in answer to an earlier question, like getting new knowledge about how you are in the world. And of course, access to the lineaments of complex knowledge, the systems behind the surfaces of what Stanley Deetz calls the “apparently transparent” is rooted in the hacker ethic upon which open source is premised. Here’s a dusty old list of beautiful priciples from Steven Levy’s famous book, in case you needed a refresher course in the history of hacker philosophy:

Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-on Imperative!

All information should be free.

Mistrust authority—promote decentralizatioin.

Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race or position.

You can create art and beauty on a computer.

Computers can change your life for the better.

The math tools BillMonk gives away for free with registration are potentially empowering, and the tools BillMonk is open sourcing are cool and will continue to be pragmatic and useful. If and when they are in fact open sourced, releasing the source code could be a sly and modern viral marketing move, drawing more grateful people to their sites. The knowledge that giving good things away and being transparent can bring viral success is, as Chuck mentions, something that’s become undeniable in the face of open source. Which is great, because that moment before you give your great stuff away and hope for the best is a scary one- it’s sort of like sending your best piece of writing off to editors to see if they’ll take it, only bigger.

It will be interesting to see how this new generation of Web2.0 programs will be licensed, and how different people will challenge and compromise with open source principles in the face of new political and technological contexts. In a warring time the trust between interactants is decreased and it becomes more difficult for open networks to form. With many international, trust-based networks in place, however, it may be more difficult for demagogues to generate the kinds of distrust that culminate in war. I apologize for pulling this conversation about finance software and open source toward high drama topics like war. This is the larger thesis argument rearing its ugly head, and wondering about how and what open source interaction communicates. In one respect the future is clear- the fundamental building blocks of a site like BillMonk are open source and can only remain so.

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[ originally posted on Monday, February 13th, 2006 at 9:55 am and is filed under Communication, Everything, Open Source. ]