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Open Source your Life

This is an essay I wrote (about six pages long) about the relationship of the Open Source Software Movement to traditional "Gift Cultures" and community building in general. It's geared toward a specific readership, though: I belong to an international fraternal organization called the ManKind Project. We have tens of thousands of men all over the planet, engaged in missions of service to the world--a pretty cool thing. To become part of this community, you go through a weekend called "The New Warrior Training Adventure", which helps men see the importance of a mission of service and empowers them emotionally to take one on.

Some men who have become involved in this community have tried to create other workshops and trainings to serve that community (and to make themselves some money!) and none have really caught on. This essay goes into the surprising reason why that is, and in so doing explores ideas of gift culture, exchange culture, and software, of all things.



A little background:
There exists in this world a community of men (about 25,000 strong) called the ManKind Project (referred to in this document as the MKP). They are non-religious-affiliated, really pretty cool guys, not wack jobs or culty, on the whole. Their weekend training is called the New Warrior Adventure Training Weekend (called the NWTA in this document). It's an intense and pretty cool weekend for men--you do the weekend, you are "initiated" into the community. Dramatic as this all may sound, it actually is pretty cool, not bent on mind-control, etc.

So these guys (I am one of them) have built this worldwide orgaization, with a mission to "heal the world, one man at a time." Reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar, I noticed profound similarities, which I talk about in this document.

I also talk about another weekend training in this document called the Inner King Training (sorry for the weird-sounding names--probably a lot like hacker jargon, once you are on the inside, they start sounding pretty normal.) In this doc I'll call this the IKT. I am a leader of the IKT, and the essay below has gone out to the other IKT leaders. You see, it seems that the IKT has never really "caught on" with the 25,000 men of the MKP, even though it is an arguably a better training than the NWTA. In fact, NO other training has really caught on with the men of the MKP. The book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" explained why that is, and what could be done about it. This actually may turn out to be a very big deal to the men in this community.

I also am the creator of another weekend program that sometimes serves this community. I am in the process of opening it up to the community now...should be interesting to see what happens!

So here's the doc. Thanks for reading!


Since the creation of the New Warrior weekend (in 1986), many other trainings have been developed to serve that same community. There has been the Spiritual Warrior, the Mission Training (now called "The Next Step"), the Inner King Training, the Warrior Monk, Hollow Bones, New Warrior II: The Rest of the Story (still being created), the Lover training, Magician Trainings, Shadow Work Trainings, Shadow Healing Trainings, A Couple's Weekend, Mother's Pillow, Sacred Sexuality workshops, and probably many more. The creators of quite a few of these have dreamed big, and hoped to be "the next big thing" in the MKP community, but no matter what the developers have done to stake out that psychological territory, none of them have ever really taken hold the way the NWTA has.

This document addresses the question: "Why is it that no other training has 'taken hold' in the MKP the way the NWTA has? And what can we do to create one that does?"

What this document is
In this document I will compare the Open Source software development community and the MKP community, and draw some "food for thought" from it. It turns out that we can learn a lot about the MKP community by looking at the world of Open Source Software development communities (Which produce the software that run more than half of the internet). This is worth doing because by comparing the two communities, we can get some valuable insights that help answer the question, "Why is it that no other training has 'taken hold' in the MKP the way the NWTA has? And what can we do to create one that does?

This will take a few minutes to read. You might want to print it out, if you want to look at it later.

Sources
I am indebted to Eric Raymond for his excellent book, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary." I will be quoting him in this document. His thinking on this topic is brilliant and I think it's possible that he understands the MKP better than just about anybody, even though I'd be surprised if her ever heard of it.

Basic metaphors used in this document
To understand the ideas I'll be going over, it will help to understand the Cathedral and the Bazaar approaches to programs--both in terms of computer programs, and weekend workshop programs like the NWTA and the IKT. As you read this section, you may hear descriptions that remind you of various trainings, though the descriptions are of software.

To understand this metaphor in the way I'm going to use it, it will help to have a basic understanding of the Open Source Software movement [you can skip the rest of this section if you already understand it]. When you write a piece of software, you use a computer language, using its syntax and following its rules. What you are writing is called Source Code. This Source Code is, to other programmers at least, explicable. Another programmer can look at it and see what it does and how it does it. More importantly, that other programmer can make changes to the software, adding functionality or fixing bugs.

All that changes once the Source Code is Compiled into Object Code--that is, made able to run on a computer. Once the code is compiled, it's just mash, and makes very little sense to humans.

Most (for most practical purposes, all) software companies only distribute their Object Code--the mash that computers understand, but people don't. In this way they are able to keep the secrets of their programs proprietary and closed. It belongs to them, you buy it (license it, really), and use it the way they let you. If it's buggy, you can't change it. If you want to add features, forget it. Fundamentally, you can't participate in any other way than passively.

This could be called the Cathedral approach to software making--you create a closed, proprietary, monolithic structure, that may or may not be amazing, but in which basically the user admires the handiwork and does what he's told (and he may more may not get a lot out of it). Later in this document I'll be referring to programs like the IKT (and possibly some other new-warrior related programs, but not the NWTA itself) as Cathedral programs.

There is another kind of software, though. It's called Open Source software. Open Source software is usually (for our purposes, we can say always) free. It is created and maintained by a community of programmers ("Hackers") who do it because they love it. They have fun with it, they think it's cool to make improvements and to write great code. As we'll discuss, they attain social status by what they contribute. Everybody who can program (or who cares to learn to) can participate, and often does.

The highest attainment of Open Source software right now is the Linux Operating System. Linux is said to be the largest voluntary collaborative project in the history of the world.

Linux was started and steered (and given away by) a guy named Linus Torvalds. He sat in his bedroom and coded, because he thought it was fun. He created some elements of an operating system, and posted them online, and other coders liked it, and joined in. It became better, and more people joined the project. As more people joined, it became even better, and got bigger. How much bigger? At this point, the majority of the internet is run by Linux servers. The Google search engine alone, for instance, is run on 10,000 (that's right, ten thousand) Linux servers.

And it's all given away for free. That's the rule. The license for Open Source software basically says 1) you can use this software any way you want, 2) you can change it (because the Source Code is always included), but if you make changes, you have to make those changes available to everybody else (possibly with some exceptions), and 3) we are not liable if it doesn't work.
 
This could be called the Bazaar approach. Everybody participates, it can be chaotic, but it gets the job done in ways that 1) Create great programs and 2) create communities of people around those programs, with their own missions and culture.

This describes the NWTA weekend.

Content value vs. Community value
In many ways, the value of the community created around Open Source software projects is an unexpected benefit that drives the whole system. The community and the culture is so fulfilling, that it gives community members even more energy to work on and improve the program. As the program is improved, people get even more committed to the community. The content becomes secondary in value to the community that grows around it. That's where the real juice lies, even though most of it gets directed towards running and improving the program.

Perhaps the power of the NWTA is in the community interactions it creates. (Anybody who's heard Bill Kauth talk about the value of Social Capitol will be able to buy into this point of view easily.) There's an interesting parallel in the world of computer software, and here it is: In Korea, something like 80% of homes are wired for broadband internet (as opposed to about 15% in the US). But people don't stay at home and surf, exclusively. They go to big coffee shops/internet cafe's called PC Baangs. There they play online games together. Not just a few people play--up to 500,000 people at a time play these games. They have discreet, individual characters, and relationships between those characters are long-lasting and complex.

This has created a serendipitous side effect: the software itself--the "program"--is no longer the most valuable part of the system. The value is not in the content itself, but in the community that the content creates. Someone could steal the program, but what good would it do? Excellent as the program is, duplicating it would not duplicate the real value--the community it creates. Someone could write a program that's better, and try to market to these 500,000 people, buy why would they leave their community? Similarly, someone could steal the NWTA protocols and run the training himself (or design an even better program, and try to sell to the MKP market). But because of the lack of community, the content alone (or even improved content) will never provide what the MKP can provide when they run it. In this way, the "software" of the MKP is proof against piracy, as you wouldn't get the real value of it by scamming the protocols. The real value, the community, can't be blithely duplicated.

On the other hand, the IKT (and other "Closed Source" programs) has no community around them. The value IS in the content, and in how well that content is delivered. A sufficiently skillful leader could steal the ideas from it and run their own IKT and provide just as much, or more. We would do well to think about ways in which we could build more community around the IKT (and these other programs), both to make them less likely to suffer piracy, and more likely to survive and grow.

Gift Culture vs. Exchange Culture
Both the Open Source Software development community and the MKP community are what Raymond calls "gift cultures." In the MKP and in Open Source Software development, the "payments" for contributing are, by and large, ego gratification, prestige, ranking, and reputation. What you GIVE is what creates rank. If what you give is good, you get ego boost and prestige.

According to Raymond, a "gift culture" is an adaptation to abundance. Because practically all of the men in the MKP have been involved just out of inspiration, and they have day jobs (much like Open Source programmers), competing for money and resources is unnecessary. They compete to see who can give the most and the best, as giving is what provides ego boost and rank.

Raymond says, "In gift cultures, your social status is determined not by what you control, but by what you give away." In the MKP we call this "the give-away," but I think in a way that title minimizes how central it is the culture of the MKP. "Give-aways" are not just things that happen occasionally out of selfless altruism. They are consistent in the MKP, everywhere, and a perfectly acceptable way of gaining status. The "give away" is the absolute core of the MKP culture, and seeing it that way has some pretty interesting ramifications.

Bill Kauth and Rich Tosi (and Ron Hering, posthumously) have enormous social status in the MKP community because they gave away the NWTA (and let others develop it). Likewise, Linus Torvalds has enormous social status in the Open Source Software and Hacker community because he gave away the Linux OS (and let others develop it). It's interesting to note that Bill Kauth and Rich Tosi where eventually each given a 1% royalty on the NWT--but not because they demanded it. Men loved Kauth and Tosi, and wanted to give to them, and the gift culture allowed for that.

But lest you think that such a thing is particularly weird, get this: Linus Torvalds gave away Linux. He did it in such a way, and the product and conditions were right, that it became a social movement (much like the MKP). Linux was a worldwide phenomenon and Linus wasn't being paid a cent. But then two large Linux support companies went public and gave Torvalds a bunch of stock. They didn't have to, but 1) it was a gift culture and 2) everybody loved Linus. So they gave him stock, which ran up, and he sold, and pocketed twenty million dollars (no kidding).

Also, his personal stock went up. He wanted to write a book, and got a lucrative book deal. He can charge consulting fees, or speaking fees. In much the same way, many people want to hire Tosi as a business consultant because they love him. (In fact, when Tosi went on sabbatical, many people, including many of this document's readers, gave him money!) Many people go to Kauth's Warrior Monk because they love Bill. What I'm noting is, these side benefits of creating an open community 1) are often unpredictable, especially from an "exchange culture" point of view, and 2) those benefits can be surprisingly big.

The Inner King Training, and other closed, proprietary programs are not Gift Culture oriented, they are Exchange Culture oriented. They are like most of the "products" of our society--designed, owned, and delivered for a fee. I'm not willing to say that's bad--you don't see me "open sourcing" my day job, and closed and proprietary often makes sense. However, I think many of us have noticed something when we bring proprietary, exchange-culture trainings into the MKP mileau: Men seem insulted. I used to think that men were mostly insulted by the price of the IKT, but now I think it's more than that. I now think that what we experience is a culture clash. If you take the gift culture into the exchange culture, it's baffling--who would give away money (to the founders) that they don't have to give? At the same time, if you take an exchange culture into the gift culture, it's insulting--why are these guys trying to get money from us? You slam right up against the fundamental basis of the entire MKP gift culture. It's a culture clash. (As an aside--yes, the NWTA costs money, but if you go to any local community and say you want to go to the NWTA and don't have money, and are sincere, they'll find a way to help you overcome the money problem.)

I think proprietary trainings fail to really become part of the MKP umbrella because their creators look at the MKP community and think something like, "I could make a lot of money selling to these guys." That thought doesn't work in a gift culture. The thought that works would be "Something unexpected and positive could happen if I gave stuff away to these guys." That's joining the MKP gift culture, rather than fighting it, and wondering why nothing ever really takes hold.

The Conditions that make an Open Source Program thrive
Of course, just because you open a training up and give it away doesn't mean that it will thrive. In his book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond says, "When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. You're program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is (a) run and (b) convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future."

You might want to take a moment to read that again, this time with the early New Warrior weekend in mind. Crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented? You bet. But it did run, and it most certainly was able to convince potential codevelopers (the participants) that something really cool was in the offing through their participation.

This blew my mind when I read it. To me, it says this: Participation is more important than quality, because the community delivers more value than the protocols! This is yet another reason why many other well-designed, brilliantly facilitated trainings try to enter the NWTA space and never really stick. The quality is not as important as the inspiration and the participation. If you can get those two things, the quality, in time, will take care of itself.

I would add to this that there must be the possibility of participation for the potential co-developers. In the NWTA, there is always the possibility of participation, no matter your skill level. In a way, one of the strengths of the NWTA is that big chunks of it can be run by sincere men who've memorized the protocols. There is a similarity in the open-source software world. If you, the reader of this document, want to participate in the Linux Operating System development project, you can. You may have to start with the basics. You may have a lot to learn. Your initial contributions may not get a lot of attention. But you can participate. Much like the NWTA. The standards are open (generally). If you want to bring your own flavor to running a process, you can. If it's great, it could well get integrated, and your gift could give you more more social status.

But not much like some other trainings that try to market to the NWTA community. The IKT is a brilliantly-designed, well facilitated training. It does run, but it does not leave potential co-developers (participants) with the plausible promise that the training could become something really cool in the foreseeable future, through their participation. This same problem inhibits some other "owned," closed-source trainings that seek to become the MKP's "next big thing," and which seek to make a living for their creators.

Possible Solutions
Raymond says, "It has been aptly said that the hacker community responsible for Linux interprets attempts at control as damage and routes around them." If you try to control Linux, everybody jumps off your bandwagon, ignores you, and starts working on some other distribution of the software. I think we are seeing this same phenomenon when "controlled" trainings try to enter the MKP-space: the gift culture of the MKP interprets the control-aspect of the exchange-culture trainings as damage, and routes around them. Thus, no "owned" training takes hold. Men are offended by them, or, eventually, just don't pay attention to them.

It appears that for many things, there is a "crossover point" in the life cycle where it stops making sense to be "closed," and makes more sense to open up, and to let it find a community, if it can.

Some companies do "open up" their proprietary software, and there are sometimes good reasons to do it (though it by no means always makes sense. Sometimes it's stupid.). One example is the computer game "Doom." In the early 1990s, Doom's creators developed in their gaming software abilities that no one else had come close to. Their software was a quantum leap, and opening it up would have simply given away something of true value to the competition. In a few years, though, the competition figured out how to do what Doom had done, and there was no longer a competitive advantage to keeping their code secret, so they released it to the Open Source world, which then helped it grow and stay alive.

Raymond (again!) says that sometimes the best way to become a bigger frog is to make the pond bigger. Another software example: Red Hat software is the largest Linux distributor. They make a little money on selling Linux install CDs, but mostly they make money on technical support. They funded an initiative to create an easier Linux installer, even though they had to give the code they made to everyone, including their competitors, because they knew that doing so would make the pond larger, and ultimately make them more money. When they released their 6.0 version of their Linux distribution, almost immediately other people began selling the same disks--exact copies of what they had released--for less money. But once again, Red Hat knew that that would make the pond bigger, and that making the pond bigger would help them become bigger frogs.

So what if we decided to open up, with the idea that it might create a larger pond for everybody? What if we were to say something like, "Okay. Anybody can run the IKT. We give it to whomever wants it. Go for it. Keep all the money, or send us some if you want. Charge what you want. Hire us to facilitate it, or don't. Get training to run it, or don't.  Hire us to train you, or don't. You must keep in the piece about the lineage of the training (in the Open Source software world, recognition is important, and it is here, too), and any improvements you make, you must share with everyone else, who are also free to use them. Also, we aren't liable for anything you do." What if we created an IKT Open Source license, and gave it away?

I want to be clear that I'm not proposing anything--I'm following an open-source, gift-culture line of thought as it applies to getting a community of men truly enthusiastic about and involved in a training. For the IKT (and other such trainings), the question to ask would be, "If we opened this up, would it then have a plausible promise of turning into something cool, through men's participation? If we joined the MPK's gift culture, rather than fighting it, and gave the IKT away (specifics of what that meant would have to be hammered out), would it inspire men's participation? If lots of guys started "rolling their own" IKTs, would that build more enthusiasm and community and create more unpredictable positive results for us all? Would worse-case scenario be any worse than it is now, with inspired coordinators setting up IKTs, if they can?

Addendum -- 8-23-04

A couple of things I've learned since writing this:

Since writing this I've tested some of the ideas, and changed my thoughts somewhat. I've moved more to a "hybrid" model, somewhere between the gift-culture and exchange-culture models. First I'll tell you the results of my testing, and second I'll talk about the model I'm using now.

I ran and attempted to run several workshops based on the "pay what you feel" gift culture model, and found that mostly it stressed out the participants, and the leaders. Nobody knew what to do, how much to give, and most people seemed to default back into the "get a great deal" exchange culture model, though mostly that seemed to me to be because they didn't know what else to do, not out of some inherent cheapness.

This made me think about the times the New Warriors have tried the "pay what you feel" model. According to Bill Kauth, centers that have tried this have averaged $650 per man -- remarkable close to what the training actually costs at other centers.

While it was tempting to think of this as proof that the gift-model worked, my experience has lead me to believe that it's more likely proof that it didn't work; that is, men coming to the training got stressed about the cost, went online and found out what it cost at other centers, and paid that amount.

So I've gone to a hybrid model. In this model I'm experimenting with:

1) Charging a set price for the course I'm running. For instance, for the Self-Facilitation Training I ran in Chicago, the price was $125.00.

2) Being open to those in financial need. I had four people contact me, saying they couldn't afford it.

I've started to learn that there are people who can't afford something, and people who just want it to be free and refuse to pay anything. Here was my solution to that:

I told people who wanted discounts that, if they were in bad financial situations, they get a discount on the course of $30, and that they could pay for the course $20 a month until it was paid off.

My thinking was, if you aren't willing to put out $20 a month for four months for a program, you probably just want it to be free. I mean, $20 is a meal out, for goodness' sake.

I offered this deal to the four people who wrote me for discounts, and never heard back from any of them.

3) Giving away the content of the course for free. This part is the give-away, and so far it's working great.

For instance, anyone can get my free "Self-Facilitation" email mini-course by sending an email, with their State and Country in the subject line, to sft-course@aweber.com. This free six part course gets sent an email every day or so, and doesn't hold anything back. It has the real content from the workshop -- though, of course, when you go to a workshop you get the experiences, can ask questions, and so on.

This mixed approach has worked well so far. The material is given away to anyone who wants it, totally free of charge (though one man has paid anyway!). People who want to come to the seminar can come to it, pay for it, and learn the information first hand -- but the information is not held back, as ANYONE can download the email course.

The hybrid approach -- selling the workshop for a fixed price, but giving away the information in it for free -- seems to satisfy both the exchange culture and the gift culture, at once.

I'll keep posting on this as I learn more, or you can contact me on the contact page and let me know your experiences.

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