Public Policy in Open Source and Net Neutrality

The Necessity of Public Policy: 
In my prior four blogs, I have talked about the research I have done regarding Open Source and Net Neutrality. My intention with these blogs was to set up a framework for how I view these topics. From that framework, I would like to explain the policies that exist relating to Open Source and since you know how I feel about the subjects my objections or approval of policies should be clearer.

Public Policy in Open Source: 
For Open Source, the biggest form of public policy is not necessarily governmental regulation or control, but rather a collective of like minded individuals who work towards a common goal. What this practically looks like is: Open Source Initiative - an organization who creates and propagates Open Source ideals and sets standards for what true Open source products must look like.

One of the interesting concepts that is “somewhat” in the works is the political party that pushes for Open Government. In my opinion, this has little relation to the success of Open Source but it is a pretty interesting concept to have in mind.

For public policy that is specifically related to Open Source, there isn’t much - but there is discussion of if there should be. Like I mentioned in my first Open Source blog, there are companies that have heavily invested into Open Source companies as a way of creating competition and propagating free solutions to product areas where their competitors are located. One of my examples was IBM and Linux as it relates to Microsoft. The discussion is centered around whether or not doing something like this is perfectly fine to do, or if the government needs to intervene. This example has very obvious economical repercussion so by no definition is it a light or “simple” discussion.

My thought is that it’s perfectly fine - companies, by definition of being successful, should be able to provide a more innovative and genuinely better product than any Open Source commune could. If the company can’t - they shouldn’t be allowed to complain about other companies investing in other companies who are more successful than them, even if they are Open Source.

Public Policy in Net Neutrality: 
My team has already presented on Net Neutrality, so in answering the question of public policy - most of my motivation is coming from the questions which we were unable to answer during the presentation. Most of the questions were very interesting and in general stemmed from a business perspective. One of the questions was the economical relationship to Net Neutrality - the question looked something like, “Does open source limit the free market by telling retailers what they must do?”

My answer to this question is also one of the answers to one of my teams challenge questions. but is as follows:

I think it's very obvious that Net Neutrality affects the economy. One of the points in our presentation was that large Internet Service Providers are looking to do things against the main principles of Net Neutrality as a way of monetary gain (limit access speeds of customers who pay less, charge companies extra for faster connection speeds, ad injection etc) From this information alone, we can make the assumption that Net Neutrality has an effect on the economy.

Furthermore, there are a variety of ways to look at the economy - the more conservative you go, people will say the free market dictates the economy and we need to keep the market as liberated from regulation and outside sources as much as possible. The more liberal you go, people will say the opposite and that regulation and outside sources can propagate economic growth.

By nature of the issue, regarding Net Neutrality, there is no "good" answer to "does it limit the free market?" beside the obvious answer of yes. Net Neutrality is an idea - much like a philosophical opinion (for example free will) the word itself is not representative of a single distinct opinion, but rather represents a set of idealogical standpoints. In saying this, I am not intending to sidestep the question - but the answer is simply yes; Net Neutrality does affect the free market. The repercussions to enacting Net Neutrality are very multifaceted. If you force ISP's to enact Net Neutrality principles, by definition you have started government regulation of the internet (not a very good thing). If you don't force ISP's to enact Net Neutrality principles, you allow corporations to limit independent news sites, monitor internet traffic and potentially lose any sense of privacy when accessing the internet. So the answer is, in my opinion, very little to do with the monetary issues of the economy and more to do with content and regulation. I think the economy stand point is something that ISP's would like people to argue over, and ignore the concepts relating to content and regulation.

Someone commented towards the end of the presentation about how ISP's could have been doing this(limiting access and speeds) for a long time, and they haven't which in essence shows we don't need to be too concerned. Personally, I hold this opinion as well - but I think it is good to discuss and consider the ramifications of adding some more public policy to this area.

Conclusion of my blogging cycle: 
This is my last blog post - it’s been a lot of fun researching Open Source and Net Neutrality! I hope I have been able to share a lot of my research, I have done so much that it’s hard to condense everything I have learned into a simple blog post. I have enjoyed being able to share my experiences with you all.

Cheers,
Brandon