. He
has done more than distributed a line of computer code. He has also
enabled thousands of people using Linux to connect cell phones, PDA's
and other devices to their computers for the first time. And he did it
from his home, in his spare time.

Likewise, a developer who leaves a security hole open in a piece of
software quite dramatically sees the results of his action when a
software 'worm', written by a computer criminal, penetrates the mail
files of thousands of users, sending replicates of itself throughout
the internet, sometimes for years to come.

Members of an open source community are able to experience how their
actions affect the whole. As a result, they become more conscious of
how their moment-to-moment decisions can be better aligned with the
larger issues with which they are concerned. A programmer concerned
with energy consumption and the environment might take time to
consider how a particular screen-saver routine impacts the total
energy consumption pattern of a particular monitor. The programmer
already understands that if the code is used on millions of machines,
each effort to reduce energy consumption by a minuscule amount can
amplify into tremendous energy savings. (Indeed, it has been
calculated that the energy required to power all the televisions and
computers in America that are currently in sleep mode equals the
output of an entire average-size power plant.)

The experience of open source development, or even just the acceptance
of its value as a model for others, provides real-life practice for
the deeper change in perspective required of us if we are to move into
a more networked and emergent understanding of our world. The local
community must be experienced as a place to implement policies,
incrementally, that will eventually have an effect on the whole. For
example, the environmental advocate who worries about the Brazilian
rainforest will quit smoking himself before racing off to the next
rally held to save the lungs of the planet. The woman organising
against genetic engineering in agriculture will refuse to let her
children eat at McDonalds, even if it requires them to bring their own
lunch to a friend's birthday party. A consistency between belief and
behaviour becomes the only way to make our designs on reality real.

Closed source: no justice, no power

An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy
will force us, or allow us, to confront the issu