[Nettime-bold] Jonathan Peizer: The Great Software Debate

["geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>]

From: "Jonathan Peizer" <JPeizer@sorosny.org>
Subject: The Great Software Debate: Technology and Ideology

The Great Software Debate: Technology and Ideology
By Jonathan Peizer

Open source software has intensified the ideological debate over
what technology to deploy in a given circumstance. The public sector, always
price sensitive to any technology solution, has embraced the idea of open
source as a cheaper alternative to commercial applications. Open Source
refers to a program in which the source code is available to the general
public for use and/or modification from its original design free of charge.
It is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers
improve upon the code and share the changes within the community. There is
also a strong ideological lobby that sees it as the alternative to
commercial dominance by any one player in the software industry and as an
equalizer with the potential of wresting control away from US software
predominance.

I wonder however, if we aren't having the wrong debate about technology and
ideology, particularly in these troubling times. Ideology and technology
cohabit the same plane of existence, but on three distinct levels:

The juxtaposition of ideology and technology exists on three distinct
levels:

* Development ideology:  How is the technology developed?
* Selection ideology: Why is the technology chosen?
* Ideology of use: What is the technology ultimately used for?

My experience is that the most important and thorniest ideological
consideration is the ideology of use. Unfortunately far too much time is
spent obsessing about the ideology of software selection to meet a
particular need and far too little time considering the effects of its
application. How software is deployed, particularly in a world that is
hypersensitive to global security concerns, has much farther reaching
implications and consequences than the ideologies used to create and select
it.

Development Ideology: How is the Technology Developed?

Ideological considerations occur early in the development process. Is
software developed for free, on a commercial basis or as a hybrid of the
two? Is an application designed to meet a social mission, a personal
interest or a business requirement? On the legal front should applications
be fully available to the public for the purposes of modification, or hidden
behind proprietary legal constructs? From a standards point of view are
considerations purely technical or are the needs of the disabled and
disadvantaged taken into account when designing new technology
specifications?

Developers ultimately decide why they build applications and if they wish to
generate profit, simply sustain the ongoing development and maintenance
costs or if contributing a piece of code to the world is payment enough for
their efforts. In our current reality, lower price points, mass distribution
networks and a proliferation of useful toolsets have allowed software
developers a far more significant range of ideological decisions to make
when they create software. They have a plethora of commercial and open
source languages, tools, operating systems and even legal frameworks to
choose from in order to develop and distribute their creations.

In this new environment it is also far easier to develop tools for the
social sector than it ever has been. The advent of the PC in the 1980's made
technology affordable for the first time to many non-profits. The PC created
a market for the social sector that in large part did not exist in the
costlier mainframe context. In the 90's, the Internet once again lowered the
barriers by providing a technology that allowed non-profits to reach out and
extend their constituencies at a far lower cost. Open source tools have
unlocked even more development opportunities for this market. Open source
tools have spurred commercial software developers to rethink their price
structures in order not to lose this relatively new market consisting of
literally millions of social purpose non-profits, educational institutions
and health facilities globally.

Developers of commercial software maintain a straightforward
profit-based ideology for any market they sell to. However, that does not
preclude them from doing pro bono work or developing applications for the
social sector that are heavily discounted or distributed freely. Open source
developers operate on a number of levels as well. Some have strong
ideological convictions that tools should be developed free of charge for
the social sector as well as for any non-commercial user. Others are driven
by a need to limit the dominance of a single, perceived commercial player.
Still others simply wish to demonstrate their creativity to the world and to
build a better mousetrap.

Whatever the motivation, development ideology can exist on a number of
levels. Both the commercial and open source developer community may operate
on development ideologies that are purely technical, focusing on what tools
to use to build generic products for any sector. Word processors and
spreadsheet products can be built using either commercial or open source
tools, and following either commercial or open source principles of
distribution. All sectors including the social sector have a need for these
basic tools in whatever form they are built. However, the social sector also
needs specialized mission-focused applications to meet their needs which are
often not available as mass-produced shrink wrapped applications.

There are software designers who follow a development ideology specifically
focused on designing tools for the social sector. As part of my
philanthropic activities with the Open Society Institute, I am the
co-founder and President of a 501C3 called Aspiration. Aspiration helps
mission-focused software tools reach a broader market of non-profit users by
marrying selected tool builders with non-profit technology support
organizations. The objective is to develop better strategies of cooperation
in order to enhance the successful design, rollout and support of
applications to the social sector. Aspiration's mission mandates an
ideological position supporting only tools that directly satisfy social
mission agendas. However it works with tool builders who develop their
applications using a variety of tools. For them the tools are secondary to
the purpose of developing the applications. The supported applications
reflect this diversity:

·  Martus: An open source human right monitoring tool.
·  FACTS:  Food distribution and management tool for humanitarian
relief organizations built by Microsoft.
·  ActionStudio, a web publishing and advocacy tool for grassroots
organizations  developed in Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Cold Fusion.

This approach introduces a lesser known cousin of open source, called
community source.  "Community software licenses" essentially facilitate the
same goals as the open source model - but with proprietary software
development tools. While the development tools remain proprietary, (cold
fusion, Microsoft ASP, etc.), the social purpose applications developed from
these tools are made available to other social purpose organizations through
a community source license. All coding improvements are given back to the
community for adoption and enhancement by others - this accelerates the
creation, adoption and ongoing evolution of software to affect social
change. Examples of this include Npower's TechAtlas, a technology assessment
and planning tool, and TechRock's E-base, a community relationship
management tool. This approach adopts the spirit and intent of open source
but makes the underlying technology tool used to develop socially
responsible applications a secondary consideration.

Finally there are also destructive software development ideologies. Some
developers create viruses, worms, trojans and other harmful applications for
no other purpose but to cause disruption. Destructive developer ideologies
aside, commercial, non-commercial, or socially responsible development
ideologies are all equally valid. They represent the product of their
developer's creative interests in solving a particular problem.

Selection Ideology: Why is the technology chosen?

As a user, how do I choose a software application that best meets my
particular requirements? Unfortunately, the questionable practice of
applying software development ideology to the software selection process is
becoming far too common and has created an unnecessary complication for
non-profits trying to employ technology to meet their mission objectives.
The idea that software selection choices should be made based primarily on
the premise of free versus commercial technology and open source versus
proprietary technology is entirely misguided.

I profess to be an agnostic when it comes to software selection
ideology. Here I diverge from those who equate open source to open society.
Years spent managing systems operations and satisfying the needs of real
users meeting long term organizational objectives has made me a pure
pragmatist in this regard. Personally, I am very happy that software
developers make decisions to create free, commercial, proprietary and open
source solutions. I applaud their various ideologies in developing these
products, because it gives me what I want most: The freedom to choose the
best solution for the job at hand. When I make a software selection
decision, ideology goes right out the window. My decision is based on these
operational prerequisites:

1. Do the application's functions meet the user specifications?

2. Do the design considerations meet project requirements?

3. Do the cost considerations meet project requirements?

4. Do the security considerations meet project requirements?

5. Do the networking considerations meet the project requirements?

6. Are the necessary resources there to program or deploy the application?

7. Are the necessary resources there to maintain the application?

8. Are the necessary training and documentation resources available to
satisfy project requirements?

9. Is the hardware available and appropriate to meet the needs of the
software application?

10. Is there a facility to convert data?

11. Are the necessary integration points there if the application must
interface with other applications?

12. What is the evolutionary trajectory of the software I choose?

Answering these questions may lead me to select applications built on
particular development ideologies. However, the selection process is based
purely on an objective set of operational criteria to deliver the most
effective solution to satisfy a stated need.

When I work with the NGO community, I know price is a very sensitive factor
that can influence the selection of applications. However, I also know that
ease of installation and use and continued high touch support are also
important factors to take into consideration when satisfying this sector. I
know that when applications don't work in this environment and there is no
support around to provide basic assistance, people become very reticent to
use the technology again; much more so than in the commercial context. I
weigh these and other factors in making final technology selection decisions
as any good project manager would.

I can think of three good reasons why not to select software based primarily
on an ideological preference:

1. A software implementation is a costly and complex affair that
involves a sophisticated behavioral interplay between people and technology.
Often it means changing the way departments or whole institutions do things
as they adapt to often less than intuitive automated processes. Most people
are naturally resistant to these changes. Technologists who manage software
implementations will tell you that there are many pitfalls to watch out for
even in the best of circumstances. Choosing an application for any reason
other than how it meets specified business requirements is a tremendous
gamble.

2. If you were to build a house, would you select your tools of choice
based on the alloys they were built with? Their craftsmanship? Their cost?
The method that went into forging them?  Most probably your primary
consideration would be to select the right tools necessary to complete the
building project. Craftsmanship, cost, alloys and method of creation might
all be considerations, but these factors would be weighted based on how they
contributed to the tool's success in helping you complete your building
project. As attractive as it might be, you would not use a hammer forged on
Thor's anvil if what you needed was a screwdriver from The Home Depot.

3. Many organizations find open source versus commercial applications
more attractive because they are free to use. Often there is never any real
plan to actually tinker with the application code to modify how it works - a
major benefit of open source products. Technical resource limitations in
order to develop a product further are already major obstacles in the
non-profit environment. If cost of purchase is the main motivation, let the
buyer beware. The real costs of any application deployment outside of
initial purchase relate to installation, training, data conversion, ongoing
maintenance, support and new version upgrades. These must all be taken into
consideration if using commercial or open source applications. What is free
now may also have a cost later. The once free, open source, Star Office
revision now has a price attached to it. This often happens as an
application gains significant market share and there is a need to better
support its continued development for the user market in an organized and
timely fashion.

I am also not convinced that the "social value" case that some argue for
open source software is compelling enough to influence a selection decision,
(e.g. that because open source is free and open to redesign, non-profits end
up with access to richer, less costly and more reliable applications,
freeing themselves up to spend their limited resources elsewhere). In fact,
I could argue just the opposite. Consider this:

The social benefit of most open source applications is primarily in their
free use and less so in their extensibility. The benefit of free, modifiable
code would constitute a far more significant social benefit if most
non-profits took advantage of it, but most cannot because of resource
constraints. There are also training and documentation costs associated with
any new and significant software modification. Commercial software is
typically closed and de facto has an expense connected with its purchase.
However, it is often deeply discounted for the non-profit and educational
environments, although not all over the world as it should be.

Commercial software developers that discount for their non-profit customer
base may create far more social value if they also convert some of their
commercial sales revenue directly to philanthropic purposes. I deal with
philanthropic institutions on a regular basis. Some are funded by
significant commercial software profits and are contributing to the global
fight against aids, the reform of micro lending and economic development,
training and education, library support, children's programs, media
development and a plethora of other social value activities. The Gates
Foundation has the largest endowment of any US foundation dwarfing the Ford,
Rockefeller, Macarthur endowments and my own institution's yearly
allocations. It must allocate at least 5% of that endowment (about one
billion dollars) of grant funding annually. One cannot separate the direct
correlation between revenue generated from commercial software and the work
of the Gates Foundation, the Microsoft Community Affairs Department, the
Time-Warner AOL Foundation, The Real Foundation and Glaser Family Fund, The
Paul Allen Foundation, etc. I am familiar with all these institutions, the
quality of their work and the dedication of the people who are committed to
the value proposition of assisting civil society. It is disingenuous to
compare the social value of both commercial and open source applications
without recognizing this other dimension of social benefit that accrues from
commercial application development.

Applying ideology to the selection process in either a commercial or open
source context is a tricky business. Personally, I have worked with and
supported a mixed environment of commercial and open source applications for
years. Let software developers choose the ideology they are most comfortable
developing applications in. When it comes to selecting an application to
meet a particular user need, always select the application based solely on
the operational criteria that best satisfies the need.

Ideology of Use: What is the technology ultimately used for?

The deployment of any technology is by far the most interesting
ideological concern but often the one least focused upon. Most software is
built to solve a particular problem or to create a new functionality. All
technology development is informed by values. However, a technology tool,
once developed, can be applied in many ways that reinforce the original
intention, run counter to it or spur new possibilities never thought of by
the developer. Ideological debates around technology development and
selection are easier to have because the issues are far more limited, and
revolve around technology choices and objective operational requirements.
The genie is let out of the bottle only once a technology, any technology,
is deployed. The ideology of use poses far more serious ethical issues than
the development and selection ideologies previously discussed. Here are five
examples in the current global context:

Case #1 Ideology and Terms of Use: What if I have a technology that allows
me to encrypt hidden messages in a digital image and then pass them to an
intended recipient who has the key to unlock the message?  This application
can be used by the Otpor Student movement in Serbia to clandestinely pass
information between members in its bid to change the autocratic Milosovic
Government by democratic means, or it can be used by Al Qaeda to communicate
its next major terrorist attacks against an innocent target. Should the
usage of such tools be somehow regulated?

And what if they are regulated?  Some years ago, then-Russian
President Yeltsin issued a decree that the keys to all encryption designed
into software and distributed in Russia must be provided to the FSB, (the
Russian successor of the KGB). That would cover the example above but it
would also cover a securely encrypted, open source, human rights
application. A Chechen NGO in Russia using such an application to track
human rights abuses would not necessarily be as fully protected by the laws
in that country as a similar organization tracking abuses against Islamic
citizens in the US. However what if this application did fall into the wrong
hands and was used by a Chechen terrorist organization?

Here the ethical dilemma takes on an interesting twist. Reporting the
encryption keys to the appropriate authorities could put a legitimate human
rights organization in jeopardy given the anti-terrorist, anti-Chechen
environment. However, not reporting the keys might allow the application to
fall into the wrong hands, allowing secure encrypted communications in a
country where it is clearly illegal without the government having a key.
What is the responsibility of the developer who makes a secure  application
freely available in SourceForge, (the online open source software
repository)?

Hacktivismo has taken a crack at this type of ethical dilemma by developing
an ideology-based licensing regime, the hacktivismo enhanced-source software
license:
http://www.hacktivismo.com/news/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=17

This modified, open source license regime requires that applications be used
for their intended purpose, to support Hacktivismo's political agenda:
Assertions of liberty in support of an uncensored Internet. Martus, the
secure, open source human rights monitoring application referred to above
uses strengthened "anti-hacking"clauses in a standard open source software
license to protect its application and users.

Making the application available with a license for intended use and clear
instructions that it should be used legally in the environment in which it
is deployed is probably the best solution for the developer to avoid both
extremes. It creates a contract between the developer and the end user but
leaves it up to the user in country to abide by both pre-requisites.
Restricting the application's use in Russia altogether would probably be as
ineffective as the PGP ban was here in the US. On the other hand providing
pre-assigned keys is not really an option as neither the FSB or the
developer would have the processes and resources in place to track every
user that could pull it off an open source application catalog like
SourceForge.

This example is not as extreme as it sounds. Commercial vendors are making
their software code available to governments in order to meet their national
security concerns in light of the global terrorist threat. In making the
code available however, trust is being put in the various governments not to
abuse or exploit this information.

Case #2 Ideology and Hacktivism:  Denial of service attacks have brought
down major websites like Yahoo and eBay causing millions of dollars in lost
business and annoying service disruptions. They have even precipitated
arrests for criminal mischief. However, the famous Chiapas denial of service
(DoS) attack attributed to the Electronic Disturbance Theater was an act of
civil disobedience, commonly referred to as hacktivism. Hacktivism promotes
social causes online, in this case the plight of the indigenous people of
Chiapas Mexico. In the current world context, what application of technology
constitutes criminal behavior, terrorism or hacktivism/civil disobedience?

The originator of the Chiapas (DoS) attack argues that the
Chiapas attack was technologically full of holes. It was acknowledged as
easy to get around and obviously technologically flawed as DoS attacks go.
It was designed as an act of civil disobedience to send a message clearly
related to an issue of social importance. Finally, it was attributed to an
organization with known credibility in the hacktivist community, a community
driven to advocate for social justice through the creative use of
technology. Given the new threats we face today, can we distinguish the
nature and intent of these attacks by the sophistication of the software
involved, the nature of the cause, the amount of damage done or the entity
from which it emanates?

Just as we must be able to distinguish activism and civil
disobedience from criminal behavior and environmental terrorism we must
learn to distinguish between hacktivism and cybercrime / cyberterrorism.
Billions of dollars of national security technology R&D coupled with a push
to standardize privacy and surveillance laws internationally have the
potential to make the Internet a much less open and democratic place than it
has been. It may be far easier to mislabel hacktivism cyberterrorism or at
least criminal mischief in the future. Yet activism and civil disobedience
are valid forms of protest and should be protected civil liberties even as
we address very valid national and global security concerns. There may well
come a time when we have to include "traditional" hacktivists as arbiters of
what constitutes hacktivism and what does not in a society that is more
sensitive to national security concerns.

Case #3 Ideology and the Technical Fix: There are two parts that make up the
Martus Human Rights application, a secure client and a secure server. The
latter can sit in a different country to securely store human rights
reports. The developer wishes to make Martus an open source application
along with a modified open source license. However, doing so might open
Martus up to dangerous hacking by those who would undermine the application
and get to the human rights data it is designed to protect. Is the
Hacktivismo modified licensing agreement the application's only protection
against people who are already have no issue violating human rights? Doesn't
the nature of the application disqualify its submission as an open source
product?

In this case, the intelligent design of the application has not
only informed its use but also its security. The basic application can be
modified as open source software. However, the security it uses to protect
users against access to their records is the same strong encryption protocol
employed by secure tools such as PGP. This encapsulated module within the
Martus product cannot be modified. On the server side, the application
designed to store information does nothing but authenticate users and store
their data. It cannot even read the encrypted messages. There is not a whole
lot of sophistication built into the server side outside of doing very
discreet and simple tasks. The processing decisions are made on the client
side. Hence there is far less reason to release the server side software as
open source because it would not be particularly useful to build upon. The
entire application speaks to both development and use ideologies focusing on
two objectives: Making it secure enough for the human rights constituency to
be able to trust it, and freely available as open source so they can afford
to use it.

Case 4 Ideology and Destructive Technology: We assume viruses are all bad.
But what if for national security purposes a democratic government creates a
virus that infiltrates a terrorist's PC and captures his keystrokes so that
important information is uncovered that prevents an attack and saves
thousands of innocent lives?

It sounds like a good idea, and is technically quite feasible.
Can we be sure that such a virus does not fall into the wrong hands or that
is not used improperly in the right hands? Just as a socially responsible
application can be used for destructive purposes, so can a typically
destructive application be used for benevolent purposes. The ideology of use
and the user often determine the context. It is more logical to regulate
applications typically used for destructive purposes than those purposed for
benevolent use.

Case 5 Free Market Ideology and Technology: What is the responsibility of
any commercial corporation that has developed its technology in a free and
democratic society not to sell this same technology to repressive
governments in order censor, secretly monitor or otherwise oppress its
people?

At this crucial intersection between social welfare and free
enterprise we have not found the appropriate answer in many contexts. The
debate around the publish what you pay movement, conflict diamonds, generic
drugs to the developing world and breaking the technology filtering regimes
of oppressive countries all have their roots in better defining the traffic
lights for this intersection. Often governments are left to regulate
business interests as a result of public outcry after the damage has already
been done.

Summary

Technology is neither an enabler nor a facilitator of civil society in its
own right. Nor is it a decider of its own ethical or non-ethical use. The
mechanism that ultimately decides the ideology behind any given technology
is its application. It should not be surprising that software development,
an area of computer science, presents the same range of ethical dilemmas
that most of the other sciences do. In this new environment we live in that
seeks to strike a balance between civil liberties and national security we
must begin focusing the software ideology debate on the more important
issues of what software is developed and deployed for. Software selection
should be left to the same operational criteria that have always facilitated
successful application deployment -- meeting a defined user need.

--

Jonathan Peizer is the Chief Technology Officer of the Open Society
institute and co-founder of Aspiration. For the sake of transparency,
Aspiration has received funding from both Microsoft and the Open Society
Institute which has an Open Source Initiative. The Author uses both
proprietary and open source environments in his work and has supported both
types of environments in an operational and programmatic context.



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