What Mexico and VW Taught Me about Open Source

I’ve been brewing on a couple of threads over the past few days that I think come together in a complicated but interesting point. We’ll see.

First, I flew over the entire Baja peninsula on the way here. It is almost entirely devoid of anything other than desert life exept at a few very small points. On farms and construction sites, they drive water around in tank trucks, with the water splashing out of the valves. As I sit in a vertiable water-works of a resort without any clue how they get water down here, I am thinking this is not environmentally sustainable.

Second, I see a lot of Volkswagen Beetles on the road, still. As the owner of a ‘71 Ghia built on the Beetle platform (aka VW Type I), I came to the realization that VW Beetles are one of history’s finest examples of an open-source platform. Viz:

• a large number of cars in many varieties built on a common, simple platform
• wide availability of parts (original, refurbished, reproduction) without any that are “proprietary” to VW - you could literally build one from scratch using after-market parts and VW wouldn’t come after you
• a large number of mechanics who know how to work on VW’s
• a robust after-market modifications and add-ons trade (think Baja dune buggies, etc.)
• truly anyone can hack on one without specialized training - if you can build Ikea furniture, you can probably adjust the valves and carb on a VW

Third, I’m here with a bunch of fraternity brothers, a significant number of whom are investment bankers, analysts, or techies. It’s led to some interesting discussion points - among many others, that poverty in China is appalling beyond description; that “small hedge funds aren’t interesting anymore - the consolidation has already begun”; that autism rates are climbing dramatically, and well-educated and affluent people in the U.S. are afraid to trust the food they eat; that “it’s surprising and a little sad that none of us are doing much of anything creative.” (I like to think I’m doing something creative, but the point is well taken given the breadth and artistic creativity of the people we were in college.)

Fourth, I started reading Paul Graham’s (so-far excellent) Hackers & Painters, thinking about value creation and software.

What I’m building up to is a point that the problems of the world are becoming more and more severe, more inter-related across local geographies, increasingly cumulative, and more and more addressable only at an institutional level. The size that institutions need to be to be players is growing - and I personally believe that government is broken.

Small players and startups can take whacks at global-scale problems, and can certainly create value in doing so. But there is so much more leverage if they can slingshot their distribution off a platform. And certain kinds of problems are going to really benefit from the kinds of contributions only an open-source movement can make.

Specifically, I would love to see another generation of open-source vehicles, this time around with an environmentally friendly bent. There would be plenty of motive for this to come from a single source - after all, the VW Beetle was the longest and most produced single-design vehicle in history. But it seems to me the Who Killed the Electric Car? problem largely goes away in an open-source context. People who hack Priuses are on the right track, but we need something more accessible to laypeople, and more modular.

I would also love to see open-source variations on Kiva and KickStart - perhaps with a Cambrian House approach to development and distribution. If you can invent a better human-powered irrigation pump that can increase productivity in developing world rural farming, distribution should not be a barrier.

Finally, we all need to be thinking about the power of the institutions we work for, and how they can be better harnessed - or at leasted “opened” - to potentially powerful, world-changing uses. Because as a society, we’re not going to be able to fly to remote desert destinations and splash around in abundant water forever.