Open Source Intelligence

Open Source Intelligence

by Felix Stalder and Jesse Hirsh

version 1.0 April 2002

In the world of spies and spooks, Open Source Intelligence (OSI) signifies useful information gleaned from public sources, such as newspapers, phone books and price lists. We use the term differently. For us, OSI is the application of collaborative principles developed by the Open Source Software movement to the gathering and analysis of information. These principles include: peer review, reputation- rather than sanctions-based authority, the free sharing of products, and flexible levels of involvement and responsibility.

Like much on the Internet in general, including the Open Source Software movement, practice preceded theory also in the case of OSI. Many of the Internet's core technologies were created to facilitate free information sharing between peers. This included two-way communication so that information could not only be distributed efficiently, but also evaluated collaboratively. E-mail lists - the most simple of all OSI platforms - have been around since the mid 1970s. In the 1980s, bulletin boards, FidoNet and Usenet provided user-driven OSI platforms with more sophisticated and specialized functionality. In the 1990s, many of these platforms were overshadowed by the emergence of the WordWideWeb. Tim Berners-Lee's foundational work on web standards was guided by a vision of peer collaboration among scientists distributed across the globe. While OSI's precedents reach back through the history of the Internet - and if one were to include peer-reviewed academic publishing, much beyond that - a series of recent events warrant that it be considered a distinct phenomenon that is slowly finding its own identity, maturing from a practice "in itself" to one "for itself." Projects like the Nettime e-mail list, Wikipedia and the NoLogo.org website each have distinct history that led them to develop different technical and social strategies, and to realize some or all of the open source collaborative principles.

Read the rest at openflows.org."