The folks over at Americans for Tax Reform hosted a debate Monday among the candidates for chairman of the Republican National Committee. At one point, ATR President Grover Norquist asked representatives of RebuildTheParty.com to ask the candidates a few questions based on their organization’s “A 10-point action plan to strengthen and modernize the Republican Party.” Number one among those points is to get the GOP to more effectively utilize technology, specifically the Internet (or “Internets,” as a certain Republican might refer to them), as a means for communicating and fundraising more aggressively.
Me likey. (Full disclosure: I am a conservative who has a real interest in seeing some changes at the GOP and having them succeed, hence having watched the debate.)
But it’s one of the specifics of their plan that leave me worried, namely the part about having “a more open technology ecosystem.” Here’s what Rebuild the Party has on their website:
“A more open technology ecosystem. As tempting as it is to believe that there is a silver bullet to solve all our technology problems, this is very rarely the case. The technology gap will not be solved by funding multimillion dollar white elephants, but by unleashing free market competition among trusted entrepreneurs and volunteers who want to help the party. The RNC should open its technology ecosystem so that trusted partners can develop on top of GOP.com and Voter Vault. We must build a corps of outside technology volunteers who compete to write applications that actually improve party operations — and invest in the best ones. We must look beyond conventional political approaches to the Web, learning from technology hubs like Silicon Valley, and being unafraid to be the first in politics to adopt the changes in technology that are revolutionizing the consumer market.” (Emphasis mine.)
So, we’re on the right track here with goals-based competition, but there’s a lot of other stuff going on in that recommendation. “A corps of volunteers” to write apps that help the party? Republicans—traditionally the capitalists and protectors of property rights, even if those principles haven't been on display much lately—are going to bet the future of the party on the idea that supporters will write all the code they need out of the kindness of their hearts because they want to “help the party”? If a software developer or company wants to create something for the RNC and not charge for it because that’s their contribution to the party they support, then rock on. But let’s be realistic… We’ve seen that opening up platforms can lead to some powerful innovations, but we must remember that the people who create really innovative technologies usually want to get PAID. What are they really trying to accomplish with asking for “volunteers,” anyway? Giving some people a sense of personal investment in the party? Inclusiveness? Further outreach? All of that stuff is great, but there are lots of other places in the RNC’s ranks for “volunteers.”
Tech entrepreneurs should be innovating, and OWNING what they create, and protecting it, and building businesses, and creating jobs, and paying taxes. They should be building apps that work with GOP.com and Voter Vault, but be allowed to protect their intellectual property (IP) rights, and license the technology to the RNC. (Heck, the RNC can’t be totally against IP rights as Voter Vault itself is the intellectual property of the RNC—the information it contains sure belongs to them.) The Republicans that I know are for all of those things! And that would truly be “learning from technology hubs like Silicon Valley.”
With this talk of a “corps of volunteers” it’s no wonder that at least one candidate started (mistakenly… I think/hope) using the term “open source,” which is a whole other thing. And that’s the problem with using the term “open”—in the public sphere, it can quickly conflate into something very, very different. If it’s true that my philosophical brothers and sisters are advocating for technologies to be built that benefit the party but not the innovator, and potentially against property rights, then they’ve moved far, far away from their roots.
That’s why I hope that Rebuild the Party’s technology recommendation will be clarified to show support for innovation, innovators, and IP.