On 100% openness - and consensual constraints
I was perusing Bob Sutor's excellent blog today and picked up
this thread (also mused on by
RedMonk among others) regarding the nature of openness. It's a big question - the idea (and the potential value) of "perfect openness" is a really interesting one - and it certainly got me thinking.
So below is a "first stab" at what might constitute a definition of "100% openness". I don't flatter myself that it is 100% complete or "correct" (whatever that might mean). But maybe (in a spirit of openness) it might fuel some others' thoughts.
I have a feeling that the only way to think about this at a sufficiently abstract level, is to focus on "inventions" - rather than source code, compiled software, APIs or whatever. So here goes.
1) 100% open means comprehensible without constraint. Understanding and utilisation of the invention must be simple. The invention must be exhaustively documented in a format which is readable by anyone, regardless of the technology they use to read documents.
2) 100% open means accessible without constraint. The documentation and any "first generation" (ie by the original inventor) encoding of the invention (for example in source code) must be made accessible to absolutely anyone, regardless of location or technology, without charge.
3) 100% open means contribution, debate and evolution without constraint. The invention, its documentation, and all encodings cannot be "owned" by anyone - no single person or entity with any vested commercial interests in the evolution of the assets can exert control over them.
4) 100% open means distributable without constraint. Anyone can make any changes at all to the invention as documented, its documentation, or any encoding of the invention without any ownership claims being made - consistent with the above, and with no charges being levied. Anyone can copy the originals, or changed originals, as much as they like.
5) 100% open means usable and modifiable without constraint. Anyone who either modifies the assets associated with the invention, or embeds them or links them to another invention, has no obligations at all to do anything in particular - no obligations to contribute any further invention in an open way, no obligation to be "open" at all.
(As an aside, it's interesting that "inventions" are what gets patented - one way of thinking about an encoding of the ideas above would be to create "anti-patents"...)
I've tried to create a list which is about the removal of constraints over invention. Sounds like a good plan. So - does this look like a desirable list of attributes, or even a workable one? I don't think so. Why? Because it's about the idea of openness, not the reailty of openness. This list would make a really crappy foundation for community invention, for example - and although the concept of "no ownership" is an interesting one, it's just not practical if taken to extremes. If there is no attribution of invention to individuals, where would you go to ask questions?
My suspicion is that even the things which are considered as "really open" and which have real utility in today's world - things like IP, XML, JPEG/MPEG, SQL etc - aren't 100% open inventions. Shouldn't we be actually aiming for 80% (or thereabouts) openness, with some "consensual constraints" to grease the wheels of community collaboration and commercial involvement? After all, Linus constrains the Linux kernel; Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C constrain XML; and so on.
Therein, I think, lies the rub with openness. One person's (or community's) comfortable constraints, can be anathema to another. That's why we will continue to have such healthy debate ;-)
