In the world of computer programming, an interesting trend has grown massively since the early 80's. The idea is very much a socialist one. I use that word very purposefully because I will attempt to show you how this is absolutely not a bad thing.

Let's back up a little bit. A few years ago, I worked for a shady company that was attempting to make money off of the big Microsoft class action suit. One of the fellows that worked there read an article in Forbes (if I remember rightly) and was questioning the fact that Linux was written by one guy. He didn't understand the difference between an operating system kernel and the tools that run on it.

As an aside, the kernel is a small central piece of the software on your computer which handles things like talking to your disk drive to save your work, communicating with your printer, managing multiple running applications, and a few other things. The tools that make up the bulk of an operating system, including command line commands such as "grep" which is used to search for text in files, or even the web browser you're using right now, are not part of the operating system, and were written by other people.

So no, I explained to my colleague, Linux was not written by one guy. The original version of the Linux kernel *was* written by one guy, but that by itself was not useful. In the years that followed that initial release, thousands and thousands of other people around the world donated their time and skill to improve that kernel and make sure desktop and server tools will run on it. Why did they do this? Two reasons stand out: 1) the love of doing it and 2) street cred - it's cool to have your code running on thousands or millions of computers worldwide.

The open source / free software world is not free of it's share of trolls, naysayers, fighters. This can be a very frustrating experience and has killed a few open source projects in the past. But many of them live on, and the people who get together and build this great stuff do so despite the detractors.

Fast forward to today. Linux is now an essential tool in the toolbox of capitalism. It allows companies to reduce their costs by not paying a huge Microsoft tax for each new server they purchase. This huge socialist network of people is actually turning out to be really good for capitalism! Sure, it changes the way money is made off of software. Instead of direct charging for the CD or whatever, now the model is a service one - technical support. So in that respect, the idea changes how some companies operate, and may kill a few companies who refuse to change. It will not however, kill the tech industry in any conceivable way.

People working together and not expecting anything in return can only be a good thing in my eyes. Self-serving, money hungry egotists have no place in the world in my vision of the future. I think if enough people were passionate about how our country runs and we were given a bigger stake in what happens, our country would be a much better place.

When I first moved to California from Illinois, I got my first taste of what this could be like. Here we have a large number of propositions on our ballot that lets us interact with the government in a much more direct way than I ever could in Illinois.

It's time we figure out how to engage the American people regularly. Find some way to get input from people early, so we don't hit a huge brick wall as we have this summer.

Socialists unite for an open source America!