The implications of Free vs Open

If you haven't already, I would suggest checking out the Free Me DVD which contains some working examples of Free Culture including a GNU/Linux Live CD. The concept behind "Free Culture" is the belief in less restrictive copyright laws that promote the distribution and modification of certain creative works. Regardless of individual opinion or perspective about the Free Culture movement, there is a definite move towards beginning to eradicate the artificial boundaries (both physical and ideological) which separate us from our fellow humans. The Web and all its possibility (in its current incarnation), is but a foundational step towards an end, that's less ideology and more a natural step forward.

However, I've always preferred the term "Open Culture," not because of the implied parallel to open source, but because it does a better job of portraying the direction that business, science, technology and even politics all need to actively pursue to avoid being rendered obsolete by an increasingly information driven world. In more ways than one, openness is the new closed. Where it used to pay to take painstaking effort to fortify the walls between us and them, it's now important to ensure the old us and them is the new we.

While everyone isn't ready to agree that all copyrighted material should be in the public domain or that software should be open source. It has become a fact of life that walls, while still very much useful, can be cumbersome as we observe both physical and cultural bridges being crossed daily. Check out what James over at Redmonk wrote about knowledge workers as switchboard operators, for an example of how a connected world is creating new roles and opportunities.

The value offered by these new set of opportunities have less to do with their costs, or lack thereof, and more to do with their accessibility/openness. The aforementioned Redmonk (Anne, Cote and Stephen included) is a breathing example of how establishing open platforms matter more than being free. Redmonk is successful as an industry analyst firm precisely because they remain open enough to charge at the point of value [James' words], not because they don't charge at all.

I'm using Redmonk as an example because I understand firsthand some of the challenges that face smaller analyst firms and since I feel their approach is one which offers a glimpse of an emerging model which is going to fundamentally change more than we currently realize. The software industry is already in the midst of a significant paradigm shift, what's next? Who knows...but the result will undoubtedly be a set of redefined boundaries and entirely new landscapes. Cool stuff.

Technorati Tags: Free Culture |  open source software | open platforms |  Redmonk

Comments

[James Governor]

thanks for the kind words alex. we hope to change the world a bit, or at least one tiny self-referential corner of it. ;-)