austraLasia 1499
Open Source Don Bosco Part II - forking the PS!
ROME: 22nd March 2006 -- Names like Linus Torvalds or Ward Cunningham don't roll off the tongue quite like Don Bosco, but they have something in common: each is 'The Father' of something. No need to repeat the mantra for the last-named of the group, but LT is known as The Father of Linux (his first name plus the Unix operating system) and WC as The Father of Wiki, a clever code web surfers to add their own material. His Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia. It's when you hear them speaking that you begin to make connections, and when we know how keen DB was to use any means at his disposal for the salvation of the young, we sense intuitively that he would have embraced the best in 'Open Source', which is really what those other two have been developing.
Only today, at a conference where he is keynote speaker, Ward Cunningham described software in the open source mode as 'a work where people see an area that's weak and they make it stronger'. He describes the code base (of software) as 'a point of strength, not a burden to be ignored', and revels in 'the way large groups of people can communicate'. If you see the world of poor youngsters as 'an area that's weak' (not too far from some of DB's descriptions) and maybe the constitutions as the 'code base', DB's explicit willingness to harness the best energies of anybody for the cause as part of 'the way large groups can communicate' you begin to see that the Open Source movement and Don Bosco are at least fellow travellers.
Open Source as a movement (a loosely applied term) has some interesting secular virtues: transparency, ease of engagement, structure, leadership, common standards, peer review, shared goals, an incrementalist approach and powerful non-monetary incentives - as for this final point, the first question one often hears from the layman is 'why would anybody want to build software for free?' and it kind of requires the same answer as 'why would anybody want to live as a Salesian Religious?' Obviously it is not money which makes the world go round.
Is structure a virtue? OS, just like DB, realises that magical bubbly creativity doesn't get you far. There's also a need for formal hierarchical government. Try writing a piece of magical bubbly code in Python and you soon see the need for structure! I leave you to look for 'religious' equivalents to transparency, ease of engagement...if you think you need them. Why not simply accept secular virtues as God-given anyway?
We have our own terminology, and there is no real need to be moving away from that. 'Preventive System' would lose out if we changed its name, I think. But that should not hinder a little cross-fertilisation. DB accepted 'Oratory' as a term, but he certainly gave it a new direction, as he did for 'College' and not a few other terms. He would not be adverse to adding the adjective 'open' to many of his enterprises. Oratory as open space within boundaries? He was certainly interested in open knowledge (freely provided, freely used), open team working (communities), open conversations (friendly chats) backed up by a firm 'code base' with solid principles but not closed forever to development.
Open Source might even offer us some new religious language: it talks about 'forking' - and only yesterday I read a piece on how Leonardo Murialdo 'forked' the Preventive System...well, to be honest, the author didn't say 'forked' but that's what he meant. Murialdo could have joined the Salesians, so enamoured was he of Don Bosco personally and of the preventive system, and actually ran the St. Aloysius Oratory for him. But he didn't join up - as the author puts it 'he breathed the preventive system, incarnated it and then applied it in his own educational institution'. That's forking. In fact Unix, which gave us the term, explains forking as a parent-child relationship. A 'parent' process forks to produce a 'child' process which may well become a parent in its own right. That sounds very much like the kind of life Don Bosco gave his youngsters, but also like the growth of the Salesian Family. Cunningham speaks of 'agile development', quite a rich term, actually, implying a vibrant ecosystem where practitioners move around from community to community spreading good ideas....hmmm, something like the endless visits of Regional and other General Councillors!
It's not only terms that OS can offer us but some models as well. Take Firefox, a classic example of OS at work. Why is it so successful as a browser? Now this begins to sound almost biblical, but the Mozilla Foundation behind it has 12, that's right, 12 core developers, their 'animating nucleus', then somewhere around 400 people allowed to fiddle with the code, about 1,000 others who freely offer patches to fix problems, 10,000 plus who freely scrutinise the code and offer their ideas, another 500,000 who download the Beta form and send in their comments. The old 'pebble in the pond' trick.
If Open Source sits somewhere between the corporation and the commune, so do Don Bosco and the Salesian Society. OS says it is open enough to learn from anyone, including us - in theory. Could we also learn from them - in practice? I think so.
GLOSSARY
mantra: as used here, a repeated phrase, e.g. 'the father of..' (probably more appropriate to a certain passage from Genesis!)
Unix: Please, not to be confused with Asterix and Obelix! Stands for 'uniplexed information and computer system' whatever that means. In real terms it is so important that without it the internet would stop, phone calls could not be made, electronic commerce would cease and we'd be in Jurassic Park.
incrementalist: small changes rather than radical innovation all the time.
Python: named, funnily enough, after Monty Python's Flying Circus! Computer programmers have a sense of humour. Python is the best way for a beginner to learn programming; an Object Oriented Interpreter language - sorry, you'll have to look that up separately. Can't keep looping the glossary ad infinitum!
___________________________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
Open Source Don Bosco Part II - forking the PS!
ROME: 22nd March 2006 -- Names like Linus Torvalds or Ward Cunningham don't roll off the tongue quite like Don Bosco, but they have something in common: each is 'The Father' of something. No need to repeat the mantra for the last-named of the group, but LT is known as The Father of Linux (his first name plus the Unix operating system) and WC as The Father of Wiki, a clever code web surfers to add their own material. His Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia. It's when you hear them speaking that you begin to make connections, and when we know how keen DB was to use any means at his disposal for the salvation of the young, we sense intuitively that he would have embraced the best in 'Open Source', which is really what those other two have been developing.
Only today, at a conference where he is keynote speaker, Ward Cunningham described software in the open source mode as 'a work where people see an area that's weak and they make it stronger'. He describes the code base (of software) as 'a point of strength, not a burden to be ignored', and revels in 'the way large groups of people can communicate'. If you see the world of poor youngsters as 'an area that's weak' (not too far from some of DB's descriptions) and maybe the constitutions as the 'code base', DB's explicit willingness to harness the best energies of anybody for the cause as part of 'the way large groups can communicate' you begin to see that the Open Source movement and Don Bosco are at least fellow travellers.
Open Source as a movement (a loosely applied term) has some interesting secular virtues: transparency, ease of engagement, structure, leadership, common standards, peer review, shared goals, an incrementalist approach and powerful non-monetary incentives - as for this final point, the first question one often hears from the layman is 'why would anybody want to build software for free?' and it kind of requires the same answer as 'why would anybody want to live as a Salesian Religious?' Obviously it is not money which makes the world go round.
Is structure a virtue? OS, just like DB, realises that magical bubbly creativity doesn't get you far. There's also a need for formal hierarchical government. Try writing a piece of magical bubbly code in Python and you soon see the need for structure! I leave you to look for 'religious' equivalents to transparency, ease of engagement...if you think you need them. Why not simply accept secular virtues as God-given anyway?
We have our own terminology, and there is no real need to be moving away from that. 'Preventive System' would lose out if we changed its name, I think. But that should not hinder a little cross-fertilisation. DB accepted 'Oratory' as a term, but he certainly gave it a new direction, as he did for 'College' and not a few other terms. He would not be adverse to adding the adjective 'open' to many of his enterprises. Oratory as open space within boundaries? He was certainly interested in open knowledge (freely provided, freely used), open team working (communities), open conversations (friendly chats) backed up by a firm 'code base' with solid principles but not closed forever to development.
Open Source might even offer us some new religious language: it talks about 'forking' - and only yesterday I read a piece on how Leonardo Murialdo 'forked' the Preventive System...well, to be honest, the author didn't say 'forked' but that's what he meant. Murialdo could have joined the Salesians, so enamoured was he of Don Bosco personally and of the preventive system, and actually ran the St. Aloysius Oratory for him. But he didn't join up - as the author puts it 'he breathed the preventive system, incarnated it and then applied it in his own educational institution'. That's forking. In fact Unix, which gave us the term, explains forking as a parent-child relationship. A 'parent' process forks to produce a 'child' process which may well become a parent in its own right. That sounds very much like the kind of life Don Bosco gave his youngsters, but also like the growth of the Salesian Family. Cunningham speaks of 'agile development', quite a rich term, actually, implying a vibrant ecosystem where practitioners move around from community to community spreading good ideas....hmmm, something like the endless visits of Regional and other General Councillors!
It's not only terms that OS can offer us but some models as well. Take Firefox, a classic example of OS at work. Why is it so successful as a browser? Now this begins to sound almost biblical, but the Mozilla Foundation behind it has 12, that's right, 12 core developers, their 'animating nucleus', then somewhere around 400 people allowed to fiddle with the code, about 1,000 others who freely offer patches to fix problems, 10,000 plus who freely scrutinise the code and offer their ideas, another 500,000 who download the Beta form and send in their comments. The old 'pebble in the pond' trick.
If Open Source sits somewhere between the corporation and the commune, so do Don Bosco and the Salesian Society. OS says it is open enough to learn from anyone, including us - in theory. Could we also learn from them - in practice? I think so.
GLOSSARY
mantra: as used here, a repeated phrase, e.g. 'the father of..' (probably more appropriate to a certain passage from Genesis!)
Unix: Please, not to be confused with Asterix and Obelix! Stands for 'uniplexed information and computer system' whatever that means. In real terms it is so important that without it the internet would stop, phone calls could not be made, electronic commerce would cease and we'd be in Jurassic Park.
incrementalist: small changes rather than radical innovation all the time.
Python: named, funnily enough, after Monty Python's Flying Circus! Computer programmers have a sense of humour. Python is the best way for a beginner to learn programming; an Object Oriented Interpreter language - sorry, you'll have to look that up separately. Can't keep looping the glossary ad infinitum!
___________________________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
