OSE Principles of Open Culture

by Marcin

OSE Principles of Open Culture build upon the Shuttleworth Foundation Principles of Open Culture. Further, from an operational standpoint, I observe:

1. There are two types of people: those with Open Culture and those in the old guard. I have seen a number of well-meaning people who are the most friendly and progressive, yet who are missing the basic concept that publishing information in the unfinished/development/process stage is useful to promote collaboration. I have seen examples where an individual was presenting technical information for my eyes only, and I requested that if they are not willing to share the document in question openly, then I am not interested in looking at it myself. My reason is that my team is the world. I share documents openly in general - as that allows me to obtain wide and immediate review - and not only from our core team, but from random contributors all over the world. If I am not able to share information openly, I am not able toas get as much feedback and collaborative development. Since I believe that collaborative development is much more effective than 'let me run off into a corner and come back with a final answer' - I would rather not limit my collaborative potential where secrecy is required. Secrecy takes too much overhead to manage - it is a form of competitive waste.
2. My viewpoint was formulated during grad school, where our group had cutting edge knowledge and I could not discuss it openly - due to the environment of competitive funding where groups compete for scarce resources. I figured that this is wasteful - yet it is the status quo. I promised to myself that I would work on creating a societal infrastructure that fosters collaboration, not competitive waste. Acting on this means to me that I share my information openly. If someone picks up the information and runs with it - that is progress for humanity. It does not matter who does it, as long as society moves forward.
3. Part of the above is publishing all under CC-BY-SA, where we coerce users of the information that we generate to contribute back to society. I am a fierce freedom lover, and this is the only example of coercion that I favor.