An Introduction

Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a philosophy of networking that eschews centralization. The walkie-talkies you got for your 8th birthday are P2P. The cell phone you currently use is not. Your walkie-talkies work as long as the 9-volt is good and you are within range. Your cell works if the battery is good, you are in range AND if the centralized network that connects you to the person you are calling is up and able to recognize you—and charge you.

In next-wave last month John O'Keefe wrote about using the P2P model in the existing church. I would like to take a step back and write a few words on what is often overlooked in religious deliberation on the subject of P2P, that is, what is presupposed by P2P, in an effort to continue to mine the possibilities of this model in spiritual organization.

Self Organization Requires Convergence

P2P comes into existence only through the convergence of various substrates of code that allow for the protocol to be. The client operating systems, standardized networking protocols and peer-to-peer client applications create the eco-system that we call P2P. As in the world of technology, P2P as a social model for spiritual interaction requires various substrates of cultural, organizational and leadership presuppositions and artifacts. One does not simply put on P2P. P2P is not a marketing plan. Rather, it is a way of being that comes into existence through the determination to enact the preconditions for the emergence of a P2P reality.

The best known P2P applications, at this moment, are those that run on the Gnutella protocol--Kazaa, Morpheus, Peercast and others. Gnutella was a rogue project of Nullsoft, the company Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper sold to AOL in June, 1999. AOL shut the project down within hours of its first public announcement in March, 2000. This was to no avail though, as the beta code had already been released on the Internet, albeit not for long, and this kept the Gnutella project alive. Today Gnutella is the basis for most P2P networking taking place on this planet.

Gnutella and the other various collections of code that enable P2P are created with various tools, by diverse teams, spanning the globe within many different models of development—some open and some closed. Nevertheless, the spirit of open access and free sharing that is the philosophical underpinning of a P2P exchange fits most naturally with the Open Source model of development—which is the heritage of the Gnutella protocol.

Projects that fall within the Open Source Initiative family of licenses are developed using base technologies and tools that are transparent, open to reappropriation and redistribution. there is a general consensus about the ethos that enables the project process model for an Open Source endeavor. Eric Raymond writes about this in his classic essay, that became the title for his book, The Cathedral & The Bazaar.

Open Source is all about the bazaar. This is the canonical analogy used in contrasting development in a strong, closed license software firm and the community development done under strong, open license projects. traditional approaches architect vast building projects from the top down that result in closed systems of mass patronage to professional institutions. Bazaar approaches provide a plausible promise by a project leader who is able to gather a community that results in an open system of co-development on a mutual project.

 Preconditions for the Bazaar Style

 What is the point of using an Open Source bazaar style in patterns of spiritual gathering? It is the same point in spiritual community as it is in software. the point is a movement away from the Cathedral building that has become our custom, with all that this entails, and a return to the viral network of spiritual relationships that are supple, loosely coupled and identified locally. That this implies that the Cathedral building posture is ponderous, tightly coupled and fixated on the trappings of meta-identity should not go unrecognized. the point of this is summed up in four words: a community of co-developers. This is the bazaar way. This is what enables P2P.

{to be continued}