Open source governance

From Metagovernment - Government of, by, and for all the people

This term is being phased-out (tentatively) within the project, in favor of collaborative governance.

The political philosophy of the Metagovernment project is most closely described by the concept of open source governance. Please see the Wikipedia page on Open source governance for a generally accepted definition of this new concept.

Broadly, open source governance is based on democratic principles and the philosophies developed by the free software and open source movements (see free and open source software), and the derivative open content movement.

Open content has proven itself at least partially effective at producing value from large-scale collaboration projects. Proponents of open source governance expect that those same successes can be achieved or even surpassed when applied to human social governance to foster a healthier society.

It is proposed that government can be successful, and even vastly superior, if it has the direct participation of all of the governed. Open source governance incorporates the best features of direct democracy and tempers the drawbacks by use of a superior participation model and community structure. It is not expected that such a system could be achieved easily, but that the benefits of such a system far outweigh the costs and difficulty to attain it.

Open source governance does not demand that every person participate in every decision. It simply allows people to participate as much or as little as they please in any decision in any community. It is thus expected that people will tend to channel themselves into specific areas of expertise and into specific communities. They will not be restricted to those areas, but they will have the opportunity to become "leaders" in those fields simply by their reputation (either informal or formal, as through a scoring system).