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I made an offhand comment a little while back, about the similarity betwen the knitting community and the open source movement. If you have a Windows computer, you may think that open source software (the Unix and Linux operating systems, and the programs that run on them) has very little to do with your life, but you would be wrong. The internet runs on open source software – only 20% of web servers run Microsoft, and that number is a LOT lower for mail servers. The internet’s core architecture – its routers and switches – are pretty much exclusively OSS. And if you happen to be running Mac OSX, you’re actually running Unix (with a very pretty, Mac-designed front end). Basically, it’s reasonably safe to assume that every computer in the world EXCEPT your desktop machine, is running OSS.
Open source began in a university lab, and its early days in the scientific community have permanently shaped today’s OSS culture. In science, your results only matter if they are published for peer review. Science only counts if you let everyone else chime in – thus, we’re a long way from Toyota Cold Fusion Hybrid cars. You need help from your colleagues, if only so that they can point out where you went wrong. (This is referred to as the “more eyeballs are better” theory.)
Science is built on sharing your results, not least because you never would have gotten there if everyone else hadn’t shared their results with you. Science in a vacuum isn’t really science – it’s a hobby that goes nowhere.
The correspondence with knitting is, I trust, pretty clear. Knitting is open source in that there are no “secret” stitches. If you buy a pattern, you’re buying the source code for a garment, which you are free to modify at will. (And many people do modify their purchased patterns, and share their modifications with others, and soon a whole host of new garments evolves from the original.) The more people who knit a pattern, the more robust it becomes, because each knitter either corrects or validates the original pattern. I doubt anyone would argue that this eternal feedback loop is necessary for the evolution of a really good pattern. (The same goes for software and operating systems, by the way. P.S., Good luck trying to fend off those Word macro viruses! Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
People often wonder, why would you develop software and then give it away? A lot of people give their patterns away for free. Some of these people are creating patterns as a hobby, but most of them are making money off knitting in other ways – they sell their finished garments, publish books and articles about knitting, or ask for a small donation in exchange for the pattern.
But this discussion leads to the most elusive aspect of both the OSS and the knitting community. This is the part that outsiders find most difficult to grasp, but insiders understand implicitly. Often, so implicitly that it never really occurs to you to question it. Why question the air? It just is.
Knitting, like OSS hacking, is an information-based economy. The coin of the realm is information – who has it, who shares it, and how well they do so. The most prestige (which is a second form of currency) is garnered by those who know a lot, are willing to share, and share it well. (This often, but not always, means that they are good writers.)
This is partly rooted in a “pay it forward” form of altruism which is ultimately selfish. For example, I would never have learned how to bind off stitches if someone hadn’t showed me when I asked – and therefore, I’m beholden to show someone else how to bind off, when they ask. There isn’t a direct one-to-one ratio, of course – I will show you how to bind off stitches, and maybe next week you can show me how the hell to unwind a skein.
The other factor is that this is an information economy, in the truest sense of the word. Information is the currency, and what good is currency if you don’t spend it? In an information economy, you exchange currency for goods and services just as you do for a cash economy – but in this case, the goods and services are largely intangible, taking the form of good will, friendship, being perceived to be smart and helpful, making someone else happy, and the occasional stash swap.
One of the quirks of an information economy is that the rules tend to be enforced by an unspoken social contract. This means that the repercussions from a breach of protocol tend to be less along the lines of a financial loss, and more along the lines of hurt feelings and harsh words. You can get a glimpse of these battle scars when someone says “NO I WILL NOT MAKE A COPY OF A PATTERN FOR YOU, PLEASE DON’T ASK.” Or with the recent kerfluffle over perceived cliqueism among bloggers – in a community based on open exchange, the faintest whiff of favoritism or exclusion can often be quite hurtful.
There are exceptions to all of these rules, of course. I can think of at least one example of a knitter who has invented a technique, and then trademarked it, and each mention of the trademarked name of the technique is followed by a ™, and presumably if I were to publish a book which involved the trademarked technique, I’d get the pants sued right off me. I consider this behavior to be rude, as well as foolish and disingenuous. One wonders, what if whoever invented the purl stitch had trademarked it? What if short rows were trademarked? Where would you be then, Little Miss Copyright?
But I digress, as usual. The great thing about this is that, as a new knitter, you have a lot of leverage with experienced knitters. By leverage, I mean that you’re free to – in fact, expected to – ask questions of more experienced knitters. And you will always get a helpful response, because experienced knitters are both beholden to – and genuinely HAPPY to – share their knowledge with you. Recall that having currency (information) is moderately prestigious, but true prestige (and happiness) lies in sharing it with others.
Knitters rule.
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