Democracy &mdash; Webmink In Draft https://the.webm.ink/tag:Democracy Things cooking in the Minkiverse. They move elsewhere when the oven pings. Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:42:24 +0100 Consulting The Fourth Sector https://the.webm.ink/consulting-the-fourth-sector <![CDATA[Update: This post has graduated to the OSI blog and is also available en Français. !--more-- It's good news that the European Commission is now considering the value and needs of open source in its policy deliberations. What's less good is that it does so through the wrong lens. The Commission needs to extend its consultations, Expert Groups and other work to include and consider the fourth sector. Rodin's sculpture "The Burghers of Calais" is a huge bronze sculptor showing the wealthiest men of Calais surrendering ready for execution so that the townspeople of Calais would be spared Post-industrial society comprises three sectors in the worldview undergirding the European Union: The Commercial Sector includes industrial, extractive, service, logistic and administrative companies. They are represented pro se, by industry and trade associations, by consulting and lobbying companies and more. The Labour Sector includes workers of all kinds - industrial, skilled, research, educational, managerial, entrepreneurial and more. They are represented by trade unions, professional bodies, trade associations and more. The Consumer Sector comprises everyone spending their personal wealth at all scales. They are represented by consumer associations, civil society organisations, religious organisations and more. But the Internet has driven change over the last 50 years from which has arisen the World Wide Web and thence the Open Source movement, which in turn have catalysed many open culture movements in their rainbow mantles. The wave of open has produced many phenomena, good, bad and pending judgement - including the gig economy, open knowledge communities like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, technology giants like Facebook and Google, open software stacks and supply chains and much, much more. The roles people play in this open wave do not fit comfortably into the three post-industrial sectors. An individual would be expected predominantly to fall within the consumer sector, with a section of their life represented in the labour sector. But an open source developer can play roles characteristic of a commercial sector player, innovating and creating soft goods (commercial sector) which are assembled (commercial sector) or used (consumer sector) by others. A video streamer may be creating new copyrighted works of great value (commercial sector) that are widely viewed (consumer sector). An author or musician can now create their own compelling brand without becoming an employee of a publisher. This is the new fourth sector. It comprises individuals, often connected and facilitated by ad-hoc or charitable communities, playing the roles of the commercial, labour and consumer sectors in varying mixes all at the same time. The fourth sector is poorly represented by the entities and roles associated with all three of the other sectors. That's inevitable; each fourth sector role will fuse together an aspect represented and an aspect confronted by any of the entities and roles dedicated to the three traditional sectors. So a consumer association won't advocate well for open source developers because an aspect of their existence is classified as commercial. A streamer won't be well represented by a trade union because they embody both consumer and commercial aspects. And so on. As a result, existing consultation mechanisms used by legislators are guaranteed to fail. When they try to deal with open source by expressing the understanding they have gained of proprietary software, they will keep causing collateral damage -- as we have seen in the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and many times previously. The need will increase as regulation tries to control, account for or promote the activities of the fourth sector without consulting it. One significant reason this has been happening for such a long time already is the lack of a term to use to raise the issue. That's why I am proposing to call this sector of European society the "fourth sector". It extends well beyond open source, covering any new, citizen-centric economic activity which is hard to have represented with only the existing commercial, labour and consumer lenses. Let's tell the Commission and other governments that it's time to care about the fourth sector, which is the driving force for all the changes they want to embrace -- or control. --- Notes, Tags & Mentions This essay and the thinking behind it about a "meshed society" has been around for quite some time -- indeed, I named my consulting company after it in 2013 because it under-girded all my thinking at Sun and before that at IBM! I finally got round to a web search to see if the term "fourth sector" was in use and ... yes it is, in the USA! Defined in a very similar way to the way I have done, although with the focus on only entrepreneurial activity, using the term as a synonym of "for-benefit company" and omitting the dimension of individual and local activity without incorporation. See Building Better and Fourth Sector Group for example. Their concept amazingly omits open source. Time to remedy that. Photo is my own, of the edition of Auguste Rodin's "The Burghers of Calais" ("Les Bourgeois de Calais") exhibited at the Musée Rodin in Paris. #CRA #OpenSource #4thSector #Policy #Democracy #Representation #Terminology Follow @webmink@the.webm.ink to be informed of new posts. To discuss this post please reply from Mastodon etc. (search for the URL) & include @webmink@meshed.cloud as WriteFreely still doesn't display replies. a href="/About"More/a.]]> Update: This post has graduated to the OSI blog and is also available en Français. It's good news that the European Commission is now considering the value and needs of open source in its policy deliberations. What's less good is that it does so through the wrong lens. The Commission needs to extend its consultations, Expert Groups and other work to include and consider the fourth sector.

Rodin's sculpture "The Burghers of Calais" is a huge bronze sculptor showing the wealthiest men of Calais surrendering ready for execution so that the townspeople of Calais would be spared

Post-industrial society comprises three sectors in the worldview undergirding the European Union:

  • The Commercial Sector includes industrial, extractive, service, logistic and administrative companies. They are represented pro se, by industry and trade associations, by consulting and lobbying companies and more.
  • The Labour Sector includes workers of all kinds – industrial, skilled, research, educational, managerial, entrepreneurial and more. They are represented by trade unions, professional bodies, trade associations and more.
  • The Consumer Sector comprises everyone spending their personal wealth at all scales. They are represented by consumer associations, civil society organisations, religious organisations and more.

But the Internet has driven change over the last 50 years from which has arisen the World Wide Web and thence the Open Source movement, which in turn have catalysed many open culture movements in their rainbow mantles. The wave of open has produced many phenomena, good, bad and pending judgement – including the gig economy, open knowledge communities like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, technology giants like Facebook and Google, open software stacks and supply chains and much, much more.

The roles people play in this open wave do not fit comfortably into the three post-industrial sectors. An individual would be expected predominantly to fall within the consumer sector, with a section of their life represented in the labour sector. But an open source developer can play roles characteristic of a commercial sector player, innovating and creating soft goods (commercial sector) which are assembled (commercial sector) or used (consumer sector) by others. A video streamer may be creating new copyrighted works of great value (commercial sector) that are widely viewed (consumer sector). An author or musician can now create their own compelling brand without becoming an employee of a publisher.

This is the new fourth sector. It comprises individuals, often connected and facilitated by ad-hoc or charitable communities, playing the roles of the commercial, labour and consumer sectors in varying mixes all at the same time. The fourth sector is poorly represented by the entities and roles associated with all three of the other sectors. That's inevitable; each fourth sector role will fuse together an aspect represented and an aspect confronted by any of the entities and roles dedicated to the three traditional sectors. So a consumer association won't advocate well for open source developers because an aspect of their existence is classified as commercial. A streamer won't be well represented by a trade union because they embody both consumer and commercial aspects. And so on.

As a result, existing consultation mechanisms used by legislators are guaranteed to fail. When they try to deal with open source by expressing the understanding they have gained of proprietary software, they will keep causing collateral damage — as we have seen in the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and many times previously. The need will increase as regulation tries to control, account for or promote the activities of the fourth sector without consulting it.

One significant reason this has been happening for such a long time already is the lack of a term to use to raise the issue. That's why I am proposing to call this sector of European society the “fourth sector”. It extends well beyond open source, covering any new, citizen-centric economic activity which is hard to have represented with only the existing commercial, labour and consumer lenses. Let's tell the Commission and other governments that it's time to care about the fourth sector, which is the driving force for all the changes they want to embrace — or control.

Notes, Tags & Mentions

  • This essay and the thinking behind it about a “meshed society” has been around for quite some time — indeed, I named my consulting company after it in 2013 because it under-girded all my thinking at Sun and before that at IBM! I finally got round to a web search to see if the term “fourth sector” was in use and ... yes it is, in the USA! Defined in a very similar way to the way I have done, although with the focus on only entrepreneurial activity, using the term as a synonym of “for-benefit company” and omitting the dimension of individual and local activity without incorporation. See Building Better and Fourth Sector Group for example. Their concept amazingly omits open source. Time to remedy that.
  • Photo is my own, of the edition of Auguste Rodin's “The Burghers of Calais” (“Les Bourgeois de Calais”) exhibited at the Musée Rodin in Paris.
  • #CRA #OpenSource #4thSector #Policy #Democracy #Representation #Terminology

Follow @webmink@the.webm.ink to be informed of new posts. To discuss this post please reply from Mastodon etc. (search for the URL) & include @webmink@meshed.cloud as WriteFreely still doesn't display replies. More.

]]> https://the.webm.ink/consulting-the-fourth-sector Mon, 10 Apr 2023 17:10:03 +0100 Code Is Law, So We Must Have Open Access https://the.webm.ink/code-is-law-so-we-must-have-open-access <![CDATA[Update: This has now graduated to the OSI Blog. !--more-- As Lessig observed in his 1999 book "CODE, and other laws of cyberspace", a citizen's practical experience of the law and of society today is through the software that implements the written law. All the computer code that governs our lives and liberty should be open to public scrutiny in this new era. More than just allowing us to guard our freedoms now, future historians will also need usable source code if they are to fully understand our digital present as their historic past. A classical white bust stands on a pedestal in front of a wall (in Paris). The top portion of the bust is replaced by the top of the document ison from a computer, with the word "LOADING" written on it By popularising and catalysing the pre-existing concepts from the free software movement, open source has been at the heart of the connected technology revolution for 25 years. Open source licenses grant all the rights necessary for anyone and everyone to use, improve, share and monetise the software powering modern systems and networks, empowering collaboration with many “known others” to create results greater than any could alone. OSI-approved open source licenses are the hidden power behind Linux, Apache, Mozilla, Android and more. But by granting all the rights necessary to evolve the software powering modern systems and networks, open source also unreservedly grants permission to “unknown others” to repurpose, rehost, reuse and revolutionise. It also allows digital archivists to store, refactor and renew the means of access over the long term. Availability to the "unknown others" — to society in general, and to our descendants — is crucial to our future. When software stays locked up inside the corporation or institution, when code created by the state with public funds remains secret, it does not add to our collective knowledge and the innovation it embodies is lost to society and when the "owner" moves on. This was the original motivation for previous generations to create temporary intellectual monopolies as an incentive to creators to make their creations public. As time has passed, those intellectual monopolies have themselves been regarded as property and the knowledge and culture they embody is increasingly withheld from society using that as a pretext. Open source allows that new-found wealth to be “spent” in a new way to stimulate collaboration. Collaboration in community has gone on to amplify innovation and accelerate adoption. It’s thus especially important that software funded with public money finds its way into Software Heritage. Software Heritage completes the new social contract enabled by open source. It provides the ultimate historical reference for the code behind our culture and comprehensive library of innovation to provide a “mounting block” to the shoulders of the giants before us. We should strive to get all the software that matters into this new Internet Archive for code. Software is a cultural artifact, a proxy for the law in the lives of every citizen, a tool for control and for freedom depending on the hand that wields it. It is imperative that all software is open for scrutiny and preserved for posterity. --- Notes, Tags & Mentions Based on my address to UNESCO on the opening of Software Heritage in June 2018. Image is my own of a sculpture by Stephane Parain #OpenSource #Policy #SoftwareHeritage #Archive #Democracy #Transparency #PublicMoneyPublicCode @swheritage@mstdn.social Follow @webmink@the.webm.ink to be informed of new posts. To discuss this post please reply from Mastodon etc. (search for the URL) & include @webmink@meshed.cloud as WriteFreely still doesn't display replies. a href="/About"More/a.]]> Update: This has now graduated to the OSI Blog. As Lessig observed in his 1999 book “CODE, and other laws of cyberspace”, a citizen's practical experience of the law and of society today is through the software that implements the written law. All the computer code that governs our lives and liberty should be open to public scrutiny in this new era. More than just allowing us to guard our freedoms now, future historians will also need usable source code if they are to fully understand our digital present as their historic past.

A classical white bust stands on a pedestal in front of a wall (in Paris). The top portion of the bust is replaced by the top of the document ison from a computer, with the word "LOADING" written on it

By popularising and catalysing the pre-existing concepts from the free software movement, open source has been at the heart of the connected technology revolution for 25 years. Open source licenses grant all the rights necessary for anyone and everyone to use, improve, share and monetise the software powering modern systems and networks, empowering collaboration with many “known others” to create results greater than any could alone. OSI-approved open source licenses are the hidden power behind Linux, Apache, Mozilla, Android and more.

But by granting all the rights necessary to evolve the software powering modern systems and networks, open source also unreservedly grants permission to “unknown others” to repurpose, rehost, reuse and revolutionise. It also allows digital archivists to store, refactor and renew the means of access over the long term.

Availability to the “unknown others” — to society in general, and to our descendants — is crucial to our future. When software stays locked up inside the corporation or institution, when code created by the state with public funds remains secret, it does not add to our collective knowledge and the innovation it embodies is lost to society and when the “owner” moves on. This was the original motivation for previous generations to create temporary intellectual monopolies as an incentive to creators to make their creations public.

As time has passed, those intellectual monopolies have themselves been regarded as property and the knowledge and culture they embody is increasingly withheld from society using that as a pretext. Open source allows that new-found wealth to be “spent” in a new way to stimulate collaboration. Collaboration in community has gone on to amplify innovation and accelerate adoption. It’s thus especially important that software funded with public money finds its way into Software Heritage.

Software Heritage completes the new social contract enabled by open source. It provides the ultimate historical reference for the code behind our culture and comprehensive library of innovation to provide a “mounting block” to the shoulders of the giants before us. We should strive to get all the software that matters into this new Internet Archive for code.

Software is a cultural artifact, a proxy for the law in the lives of every citizen, a tool for control and for freedom depending on the hand that wields it. It is imperative that all software is open for scrutiny and preserved for posterity.

Notes, Tags & Mentions

Follow @webmink@the.webm.ink to be informed of new posts. To discuss this post please reply from Mastodon etc. (search for the URL) & include @webmink@meshed.cloud as WriteFreely still doesn't display replies. More.

]]> https://the.webm.ink/code-is-law-so-we-must-have-open-access Mon, 03 Apr 2023 14:11:12 +0100