Thinking Allowed

Open Source Mentalism
by Jon Thompson

In late 1983, Richard Stallman announced that he was quitting the famous AI Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Why am I telling you this? Well, I was recently commissioned to write about the consequences of his decision, and it struck me that it might be interesting when applied to mentalism – quite a large number of non-computer-related areas, in fact.

You see, Stallman quit to write a complete replacement for an operating system called UNIX, developed in the late 1960s at Bell Labs. He called his alternative GNU, short for “GNU’s Not UNIX”. He also wrote the “GNU Manifesto”, in which he said he would simply give his work away including the source code to whoever wanted it. Was he insane? To answer that, and to see why it’s relevant to the development of mentalism, we need to return briefly to the swinging sixties because the origins of Stallman’s decision will help show see how his ideas could apply elsewhere.

Back to the Future

During the 1960s, computing experienced explosive growth due in part to the introduction of the minicomputer. Reduced to the size of a mere wardrobe and costing as little as a family car, minicomputers made it easier for companies and university departments to own their own computing facilities.

At the time, it was usual to bundle the source code for the computer’s operating system and applications. In places such as MIT, the word “hacker” emerged, describing systems programmers whose job it was to have the departmental computer accomplish whatever task was required of it. The hackers hacked UNIX and its applications, improved them and made them do new things as required. The hackers freely swapped their work with other departments, universities and even Bell Labs, and in return received improvements to their work and new programs written by others.

By the end of the 1970s, the market for UNIX was very large because the operating system had been ported to hardware from different manufacturers. When a company or university department upgraded to a new computer, UNIX ensured that they didn’t have to completely re-write their entire software library. However, at around the same time, MIT’s investors saw that there was money to be made from some of the software their hackers created. From now on, outsiders would have to pay. Stallman, one of the MIT hackers, was furious.

At about the same time, Stallman also gave a piece of software he’d written to a commercial company to use. Their programmers improved on his code but their bosses refused to let him see the changes they’d made so that he could incorporate them back into his original work. This, it seems, was the final straw.

Genius in Disguise

Stallman finally left MIT in January 1984. Being a prolific programmer, GNU grew quickly to become a capable and free alternative to UNIX. Stallman distributed it under a licence called the “GNU Public Licence” or GPL for short. This states that if you use any of the code it covers in one of your own programs, you must include the source code for study by anyone, along with any improvements you’d made, so that the GNU project could also see it and re-incorporate the best changes back into to the official release. Stallman also said that anyone could release their own software under the GPL. The benefit was that far more people would examine the source code, improve it and look for bugs. It would evolve quickly to become stable and functionally rich.

But how could Stallman or anyone else ever make money by giving things away? This is the really ingenious part. GNU was, as his manifesto said, free to flow to whomever needed it. This created a ready and quickly growing user base as people abandoned the costly UNIX. Users were also allowed to pass GNU on to others – it literally couldn’t be pirated. Most, however, wanted to install and use GNU like they had with UNIX, not spend time exploring and hacking it about into something new or better. To satisfy these people, Stallman sold training, books and consultancy showing how to run the operating system, write programs for it, and so on. In one fell swoop he created a product, a growing, enthusiastic user base, and a market for his skills – all by giving away free what many thought of as “the product”. Far from being a dangerous anti-capitalist hippy, Stallman was actually a genius.

Today, the “open source” or “free software” movement Stallman founded is a multi-billion dollar industry, of which Linux is the poster child. You see, Linux carries a lot of benefits (not least of which is the vast amount of open source software available to download for it). While you’re free to download the complete Linux source code, compile it all up and fix any glitches as you go, most people don’t have the skill. It’s SO much easier to simply pay a small fee for a DVD containing a complete, supported distribution that installs perfectly in 20 minutes and contains thousands of applications covering everything from word processing to games and even Windows emulation. That’s why open source companies can be listed on the stock market while paradoxically giving away their products.

And The Mentalism Angle is?

Stick with me on this...

Supposing you create a detailed technical document for performers giving a toolkit of original techniques. You give it away to whoever wants it, and encourage them to pass copies on. This document is covered by a GPL-like “open source” licence, and as such, any improvements made by others to the techniques it contains must be emailed back for full attribution and incorporation into the next release.

This group effort causes the document’s content to evolve and become stronger. The document is like Stallman’s GNU operating system. The techniques it contains are the operating system upon which the effects built using it run, just as a deck of cards is the operating system upon which a card trick runs, and Windows is the operating system upon which Microsoft Office crashes.

Just as Stallman gave away GNU then sold the knowledge to use it to the user base this act readily created, so anyone can sell their in-depth knowledge of the techniques contained within the document. This knowledge might be in the form of private tuition, lectures,. They could also be commercial effects, which, being derived from the techniques in the original document are also covered by its licence. The clever thing is effect developers lose nothing by this but gain quite a lot. Here’s how.

Effect developers already give away the “source code” (the method, in other words) to effects they sell (there’s no point otherwise!). They just have to feed back any improvements they make to the original techniques the effects use to the person in charge of the document’s official content and release timetable. The techniques in the document clearly benefit from this evolutionary feedback, but the really clever thing is that in turn, any purchaser who improves on a commercial effect using the techniques also has to pass back to its developer the improvements they make to his work.

I seriously predict that whoever takes this “open source” approach to mentalism is, history would suggest, in line for some success. Exposure would require a deep knowledge of the techniques in the first place, so could become far less of a problem.

But is anyone brave enough to try open source mentalism?

Jon Thompson