Distibutism - The Open Source Government?

Open-source software is growing in popularity. OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox and good examples of this trend, which is becoming more accepted and adopted by home users and business users alike. Under the open source model, software - and its source code - are made freely available to the public, allowing for more community involvement in the production of the software.

There are several similarities between this software licensing and development model that parallels an older idea regarding a broader application. Distributism is an economic philosophy that specifies that ownership of productive property (tools and resources necessary for production of goods) be distributed as widely as possible amongst the public. This is in contrast to the most dominant and established philosophies of capitalism and socialism.

In practice, capitalism leads to a handful of individuals controlling and owning the majority of the productive property. As G.K. Chesterton put it, “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.” Microsoft’s veritable monopoly on PC operating systems and productivity software is an example of capitalism both in the economic and in the software licensing sense; as such it is notorious for being sluggish to fix errors in the software and overly taxing on users in the way of high prices. Socialism, on the other extreme, allows no individuals to own productive property, but rather the state or community. I can’t think of a corollary among software licenses, though.

At the surface, though, the popularity and effectiveness in open source software, which seeks to involve as many individuals in the development of new product by sharing the intellectual property, has some parallels in philosophy with Distributism, which seeks to put the resources and tools of production into as many different hands as possible.

I’m not sure how well the similarities will hold up upon closer examination, but it may be worth examining closer - especially since no American political part espouses the ideals of Distributism, and our current parties (if we are to even for a moment believe the media) are driving the country’s citizens further and further apart.