February 06, 2006
Common Law is Open Source Law!
The homepage of http://OpenSource.org reads:
The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.
I believe this is largely the same argument used by supporters of the English common law legal tradition. From the article Morgan to which Morgan linked about Dubai adopting common law:
Why has DIFC chosen English common law in preference to the codified system of "civil" law, derived from Roman law and used throughout Europe, the Middle East and beyond? [...]"The judge has discretion to fashion remedies where precedents do not exist or existing remedies are not adequate to right the wrongs," he says.
The general principle is that having judges constructing local ad hoc remedies based on precedent is superior to civil law proclaimed by the state. It is very much parallel to having programmers construcing local ad hoc software solutions based on existing available code.
Perhaps this was obvious to others, but I just made the connection now.
Posted by Alex at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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