Nigel McFarlane

Managing Complexity

Written by admin on April 21, 2009

For all this, the ICT industry still has a major structural problem. Even Open Source software is shrouded in a sense, either by its extremely fine grained complexity or by translation to unreadable data. Unlike the Law or Accountancy, the essence of software – the source code – is not yet digestible by humans in an ordinary way.

The intermediate solution to this problem is to subcontract the understanding of Open Source to specialists. There are three layers of support currently. At the coalface are the individual Open Source programmers who do understand the software (”trust me, I’m a Doctor”). At the second level are the funding organisations that support these people. Currently this funding is a combination of university, business, government, not-for-profits, grantmaking bodies and grass-roots volunteers. At the third level are businesses that profit from bringing needy buyers and available software together. In short, everyone is involved.

As more ICT secrets are revealed as Open Source, this subcontracted understanding must expand. Therefore, the Open Source community is growing. If there is any revolution at work, it is a very long term one as our society moves an ICT industry that consists mostly of owned secrets to a new public domain infrastructure of publically known quantities. Who administers such an infrastructure is a matter for governments and business to decide.

The displacement of concepts from secret and private places into the light of day has other benefits, especially where the secrets are reprehensible. Insider Trading and Organised Crime, for example, should be exposed to public media discussion. They should be described in government-sanctioned public laws. Only people at the margins of acceptable human behaviour are likely to be affected. The rest of us are merely better off in some lesser or greater way.

The exposure of secrets does not, however, bring about the ruin of everyone. For business consumers, the only Open Source question worth asking is: for the ICT services I need today, is the transition process complete enough that I can rely on the public solution yet? If it is, I must pay to interact with those public solutions usually through a vendor. If it is not, I must pay a premium to a vendor that retains unshared secrets. In between is a grey area: would I spend less supporting the transition process than I would keeping a secret holder in business?

We see that a natural process is underway. Most major computer vendors now have billion dollar businesses providing customers with access to Open Source technology. No one is ruined yet, and only an unlucky or recalcitrant few have ruination as a likely outcome.