Discussing "open"
The whole discussion seems to be built on a very strange misunderstanding. A lesson I learned from reading about cloud computing and intellectual capital is: there is not always a definite need for a strict definition. Let broad concepts be broad and learn to treat them as an adjective. The latter is especially useful for cloud-related discussions but makes the venture to define "open" very strange. It is already a perfectly useful adjective to start with...
Google's started things of with his manifesto of openness Meaning of open, simply declaring that "open systems win." Others have joined and built upon the discussion and to some degree objected to the self-declared dedication to openness. Many have noted that while Google is certainly not the worst, the firms bisggest successes (search and advertising) is definitely closed. Gartner's Brian Prentice (gartner.com > Brian_Prentice > The truth of open) notes that "the truth is that closed systems still win. Open systems, practically speaking, are basically good for making others lose". Harvard Business School Professor Tom Eisenmann shows his work investigating open platforms (platformsandnetworks.blogspot.com):
Figure courtesy of Tom EisenmannChris Dixon (cdixon.org > google should open source what actually matters their search ranking algorithm) sees Google's openness as “commoditizing the complement" and their closed search and advertising algorithms as "security through obscurity". The sometimes harsh language aside, this a very interesting subject: what is the lock-in of the open-source software era...Also read: techcrunch.com > google open when convenient
Comments [0]