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The Open Source Metaphor
Open source is a metaphor for the way innovation works best in all ways of life.
Rarely does brilliance come out of nowhere. It usually comes from being inspired by something and taking that inspiration and adding a little more.
That's how open source software works. That's how blogging works. That's how a lot of things work.
So with that thought rattling around in my brain, I came upon the Trickster's discussion of bluesman Robert Johnson this weekend. Robert Johnson is an inspiration to many of the great musicians of our times, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, etc. But many debate his contribution to the world of music and claim he was a "minor figure" in the development of the blues.
Well I have tried to get into Robert Johson more than a couple times, but his music is too sparse and too thinly recorded for my enjoyment.
That said, Trickster's post is worth reading because in it he asserts the exact same point that I was making about the open source metaphor.
To qoute from Trickster's post:
"Johnson did what hundreds of great artists have done--he took folk material from around him in the world and through an act of creative molding, turned that material into something more than just found stuff. He turned it into literature."
This is how open source works. It is how blogging works. And with the digital revolution upon us, I believe this is how much of the innovation that will result from the digital revolution will work.
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Posted December 13, 2004 in Venture Capital and TechnologyComments
Fred-
It's really funny that you picked this up this way, because I once wrote something exploring the same analogy--the blues, the i-iv-v and various lyrical tropes as the open source stuff of rock and roll.
Posted by: Jason Chervokas | Dec 13, 2004 8:37:12 AM
These are terrific insights. Musical traditions are all built on a limited set of common facts and attributes - tones, tempos, etc. - that can be combined and reused pretty much infinitely. Just like the languages of blogging and computing.
I discovered Robert Johnson, as many of us did in the mid-60s, through Eric Clapton's work with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers.
Fred's depiction of Johnson's recordings as "sparse and too thinly recorded" is dead on. But if you listen to the songs in the context of his time, and revisit contemporaries and followers from Son House and Lonnie Johnson to Blind Willie McTell, Mississippi John Hurt and Muddy Waters, you get a truer picture of the breathtaking impact Johnson's compositions, style and bluesman legend have had.
Clapton's homage earlier this year, "Me & Mr. Johnson," while not EC's best work, is more than a passing nod to that influence. It stikes me as a grateful acknowledgement from one of our era's greatest guitarists that he wouldn't be where he is today without Mr. Johnson's "folk" music to pave the way.
Posted by: Bennett | Dec 13, 2004 9:42:21 AM
Good take on music. All things with a deep heritage must, of course, be the products of what went before. It’s a subtle aspect of what Newton may have meant when he said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Which, incidentally, was copied from a Jewish sage, Isaiah ben Mali di Trani (b. 1200).
The saying’s obvious meaning is that those that went before are holding us up and allowing an unprecedented perspective. More subtle meanings might include: If you want to be innovative, climb up the mountains of learning around you.
Open source is amazing because it finally puts a business face on old traditions. Traditions like the roles of a father (surely you’ve caught glimpses of your children copying you) are suddenly interesting from a business perspective. When your kids learn and improve on your ideas, they are moding and hacking previous versions. When they take what they see and do it themselves somewhere else, they are copying and replicating working versions into different applications.
I'd be interested to read ideas you have on open-source type ideas in business outside software development.
You might enjoy a post I wrote earlier this month: Copy-cat. Let me know what you think if you drop by.
Thanks for your blog, I enjoy your ideas.
Posted by: Jeremy | Dec 13, 2004 6:25:50 PM
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