A tale of two tacos: The benefits of open source
I recently read about the death of Todd Mills, an American man who dreamed of a cheesy spiced corn tortilla. Mills’ story demonstrates the power of shared ideas, and it’s an important lesson for makers.
Short story: Mills suggested Frito-Lay make a taco shell from their Doritos corn tortilla chips. The company originally declared that they did not accept product ideas from customers, but Mills persisted with a social media campaign reported to have gained a million hits. Frito Lay then took the idea to Taco Bell. Doritos Locos Tacos became one of Taco Bell's most popular products ever, generating around $700 million in revenue.
Mills got a trip to Taco Bell's test kitchens and a t-shirt. But, as he told the Arkansas Times,
"Everybody that I tell about this says 'You should be getting some money off these.'" Nevertheless, Mills seems to shrug off the idea that he should lawyer up. "I've never once said that I deserved any sort of compensation," he said. "I can't be the first person to think of this."
On the other hand: "If they wanted to send me a big taco check, that would be alright."
I’m not saying Taco Bell or Doritos should have acted differently. But I can suggest how an alternative saga might have played out.
Share and share alike
Let's start with the taco itself. No one should claim intellectual property rights to a stuffed tortilla — it's public domain.
Public domain is not the same as open source. If the taco were open source, then the indigenous peoples of the Valley of Mexico would have claimed ownership of the taco and licensed it to their neighbours and the Europeans who started turning up about 500 years ago.
If that license were similar to the GNU General Public License (GPL), the most widely used free software license (and the license Sourcefabric uses, as a rule), it might have said: "You're free to make your own tacos, flavour them however you want, and even sell them, provided you always acknowledge that we made the original taco and that you don't violate certain rules of our community like — oh, I don't know — destroying our civilization and enslaving our people."
When Mills wrote to Frito-Lay, he didn't assert any ownership to the idea of a Doritos-flavored taco. As far as we can tell, Mills was satisfied with the way things turned out. But if he had released his idea to the public, he could have enabled more than just one fast-food chain to make the cheesy taco he craved. A free-licensed cheesy taco recipe would have given Frito-Lay, Taco Bell and anyone anywhere unfettered use of the idea, and allowed others to improve on it.
Doritos Locos Tacos are a huge success for Frito-Lay, Yum! Brands and millions of people with the munchies. It looks like Mills was satisfied with the product, and he publicly stated that he wasn’t looking for compensation. At least a few people would like to see Taco Bell and Doritos giving his family some support — a request worth considering.
Better for everyone
I hope the experience of Todd Mills doesn’t discourage smart people from pursuing creative ideas. The danger, I think, is that future food mash-up visionaries will look at happened here and keep their ideas to themselves, out of fear that it’s impossible to get credit and compensation.
And I suspect manufacturers feel the same way. All makers need to be open to fresh ideas, wherever they come from. We can’t close ourselves off and reject collaboration. Sourcefabric is built on the strength of a global community of developers and journalists who share their ideas and experience. That’s our strength.
And it’s the strength of open source. When makers pull together, innovation gets to the user faster. So instead of a single idea from a single person which relies on a single company to make it real, the possibilities of the taco are limitless. Check out Dan Sinker’s community-driven taco on GitHub. It's covered by a license that declares the recipe to be public domain.
- What do you think? What would happen if Taco Bell and Doritos open-sourced their taco? Let me know @theoschwinke.