[DG: Open Forum] open governance in higher education

[Luke FERNANDEZ]

I haven't grokked Masson's recent article on Openness in it's entirety.  [http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume46/OpenGovernanceinHigherEducatio/222651]And it's been a while since I've read or looked at Steven Weber's book.  So I'm still trying to sort things out.  But if I was about to show up at a book group that was discussing Masson's piece the below is some version of questions I'd want to pose.  Interesting article....
1) In the closing chapters of The Success of Open Source Steven Weber discusses how the ideology of openness has had some impact on international politics and the emerging relationships that are occurring between nation states and non state actors with highly distributed systems of organization (Weber, as I recall is mostly making reference to terrorist organizations).  As a political scientist Weber is interested in making connections between open source and the study of governance on a national and international scale.  But are the insights and connections he draws also applicable and usable in studying the relationships that Masson is trying to draw between open source and academic governance?
 2) Masson's narrative, like Weber's starts with open source and then proceeds to use that ideology as a framework for understanding (and imagining transformations) in more traditional governance structures.  While this is an interesting approach is it possible that the narrative needs to be expanded?  
 From a Marxist (materialist) perspective Masson's story is a very reasonable one:  If changes in material infrastructure are the drivers of change than it makes sense to look for new models of governance in the context of emerging technologies and the social practices and relations of production that coalesce around them.  
 But from an idealist perspective one might be inclined to extend the narrative backward and ask whether contemporary open governance is best inspired by open source or by longer standing principles of openness and democratic thought in Western (and Eastern) history. To take just one example: Masson cites Raymond's 7th and 9th principle: "If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will become your most valuable resource" and "The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas for your users. Sometimes the latter is better."  Within the context of software development these are inspiring insights for transforming governance.  But from a larger organizational perspective I'd be hard pressed to say that these principles originated in open source.  One can find resonances of it at least as far back as Aristotle who in the politics pronounced "it is the diner not the cook that pronounces on the quality of the dinner."  
Given the above frameworks what are the advantages of Masson's approach?  And conversely, what important parts of the story does Masson leave out?
 3) Finally, this chronicle story on a wikileaks for academia came out a few weeks after Masson's article:  
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/a-wikileaks-clone-takes-on-higher-education/29947
Will the new open technologies serve to make academic governance more transparent?  Is this a relevant factoid to add to Masson's story?
Cheers,
Luke
http://itintheuniversity.blogspot.com
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