Refolding the Instructions
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Tim O'Reilly
Apr. 09, 2003 09:17 PM
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I enjoyed your April 6, 2003 blog entry, "The Architecture of Participation"
as it struck a chord with my own experiences.
While this may be out somewhere in left field, I would suggest that another way to express the success of Open Source communities is its embodiment of an idea I first encountered in Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In chapter fourteen, Pirsig recounts a conversation with Robert DeWeese, an acquaintance with whom Robert and his son are staying. The conversation revolves around a set of instructions for assembling an outdoor rotisserie grill. While Pirsig thinks about the technical correctness of the instructions and DeWeese expresses frustration with the "lack of artistic continuity," Pirsig's son Chris refolds the instructions so that an illustration sits next to its text. This seems to maintain the accuracy of the instructions while providing a style which is easier to follow.
The beauty of Open Source-centric communities is that refolding the instructions is not only allowed, but encouraged. Refolding Mozilla has produced several applications, each of which uses the Mozilla framework while satisfying another end. Indeed, Mozilla.org even lists several projects not associated with the Mozilla project itself but which use the Mozilla framework itself. (And, let's not forget the O'Reilly book, Creating Application with Mozilla, by David Boswell et al.)
Pirsig's conversation and thought process goes on and there are several gems to be found. One that still sticks with me even today is:
"What's really angering about instructions of this sort is that they imply there's only one way to put this rotisserie together -- their way. And that presumption wipes out all the creativity. Actually, there are hundreds of ways to put the rotisserie together and when they make you follow just one way without showing you the overall problem, the instructions become hard to follow in such a way as not to make mistakes. You lose the feeling for the work. And not only that, it's very unlikely that they've told you the best way."
Having gone through my first couple of OpenBSD installations, I know exactly what Pirsig must have felt.
In a previous lifetime, I worked with proprietary systems, a la Armonk, New York, and Redmond, Washington. The instructions I had offered one way to install the software. If I didn't grasp the instructions or the prescribed solution, then I looked elsewhere. But, elsewhere I only found rehashes of the official procedures or solution. As mentioned in your conversation with Adam Turoff and in Matthew Langham's post, such conditions were the result of the software's originators and the subsequent communities. One could say that the instructions were merely photocopied and redistributed, rather than refolded into a new orientation.
When I recently installed OpenBSD and its implementation of SendMail and BIND, I again came to a point where the developers' instructions stumped me. Unlike before with proprietary software, I found the instructions for Open Source Software presented in many different formats and from many different perspectives. Taking a bit here and a bit there, I was able to assemble enough information to build mail and DNS systems that worked for my situation. Not only had the community "refolded" the instructions, some members had chosen to escape paper and use sculpture, watercolor, song, and dance, so to speak.
More importantly, I felt the solution I had crafted for my installation would be just as acceptable to the community as that directed by "official" documentation. In other words, I don't expect a reply in any forum to read "That workaround is not supported," which is exactly what I would have received in many proprietary software's support forums.
In other words, my solution is one of "hundreds of ways to put the rotisserie together" and the grill makers (a.k.a. OpenBSD, SendMail, and BIND) haven't made any presumptions which stifle the creativity around implementations.
In short, one might find that the points recently made about OSS answer some interesting questions raised in a forty year old philosophy book.
Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. In addition to Foo Camps ("Friends of O'Reilly" Camps, which gave rise to the "un-conference" movement), O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the Web 2.0 Summit, the Web 2.0 Expo, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the Gov 2.0 Summit, and the Gov 2.0 Expo. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar, "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim's long-term vision for his company is to change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. In addition to O'Reilly Media, Tim is a founder of Safari Books Online, a pioneering subscription service for accessing books online, and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, an early-stage venture firm.
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Frankly, I think that the story is more a warning to the open source community. We need to be careful about blindly criticizing the things that come out of Armonk and Redmond.
DeWeese and Pirsig would have preferred a 'quality' experience from the instructions -- instructions that actually *instruct* the reader about what is going on, so the reader understands, then can understand the way -- and its many alternatives.
But I don't see the leap to open source diversity. If there were instead a shelf foot of competing grill-assembly instructions to pick from, that would be ridiculous. It's a grill. One good set of instructions would be enough.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is about Quality, not quantity or diversity.