While I obviously think "open" is a good meme in general, my concern is that the word today can mean anything or nothing at all. I've seen too many self-issued press releases, duly picked up on and echoed by the media, claiming that some technology or platform is open. To me, "open" requires a minimum bar of licensing (supporting derivative works, free use, etc.), a demonstration of a sustainable ecosystem of diverse contributors, and an equally accessible participation model. It's good to push back about things that pay lip service to "open" but don't do anything to back it up. - DeWitt Clinton

Nothing against BOSS here, btw. - DeWitt Clinton

Today? "Open" has been a popular but meaningless buzzword since forever. Remember the Open Software Foundation, OpenVMS, OpenLook, Open Inventor? Dare's complaint is approximately 20 years stale. But regardless, mock it if you will, interoperability indeed seems to be a major part of what makes "Silly Valley" go. - ⓞnor

Point taken. - DeWitt Clinton

ⓞnor, I realize people have been taking "Open" in vain for a while but there seems to have been a resurgence of Open in technology spec names in the past year or two Open Document Format, Office Open XML, OAuth, OpenID, OpenSocial, etc. - Dare Obasanjo

Fortunately, in at least some of those cases they were intended to really be open, at least according to the criteria I mentioned above. OpenSocial, OpenID, and OAuth all are shooting for that standard, anyway. I can't really speak for ODF or OOXML. (Good marketing strategy is another question altogether.) And since we're on the topic, the OWF is intended to put some teeth behind it in the form of an ip license and incubation process that goes a lot further than "press release open". - DeWitt Clinton

I still think you'd actually like the OWF ideas if you gave them a fair shake, Dare. : ) - DeWitt Clinton

Dare, I'll take "open" over "simple" - Bill de hÓra

Linguistic precision has definitely been degrading. I was disturbed to see both CNET and ZDNet confusing BOSS with Open Source [0]. And then Hugh MacLeod just quoted JP Rangaswamy's call for "open standards" and concluded that "open source" will save the cloud [1] (umm, that's not what JP said or meant). Aral Balkan [2] made the same n00b error talking about GAE. [0] http://visitmix.com/blogs... [1] http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveabl... [2] http://aralbalkan.com/1426 - Joshua Allen

Joshua, actually the parts about GAE are accurate. "This is why having the Google App Engine SDK be open source is of utmost importance and, I believe, a spark of genius on Google's part." We released the App Engine SDK under the Apache license on purpose -- I don't believe people should be locked into Google's implementation if they want to find alternatives. Granted that's just a first step, but it's more than a token effort, it's a philosophy about how this stuff should work. - DeWitt Clinton

Wake me up when Google has Open Sourced BigTable and all the bits underlying GAE. Providing the source code to an SDK is the least you can do. Even proprietary platform vendors like MSFT and Sun provide source code for .NET and Java, let alone GOOG whose GAE SDK source isn't particularly interesting without the entire platform stack. - Dare Obasanjo

That un-interesting bit of code was ported to run on Amazon's EC2 just 7 days after launch, partly thanks to the open source SDK, but mostly due to EC2 and some great engineering. We were cheering, though. (http://waxy.org/2008...) And BigTable has two great open source impementations (HBase and HyperTable) already. And .NET isn't open source in the least bit, unless you count Miguel's Mono project, which Microsoft has nothing to do with. - DeWitt Clinton

If you want to attack Google for not being open enough there are plenty of vectors. I know, it's part of my job to do it. But this isn't one of them. - DeWitt Clinton

Oh, but that aside, you do raise an interesting point, Dare. I personally don't think Amazon or Google or Salesforce or Microsoft (when it launches a hosted environment) should be expected to open source the underlying bits. What's important is making the external interfaces (the SDKs, the protocols, the formats) licensed such that they can be cloned, and the data made available for migration. That's all -- the implementation details are the way the hosts can compete and add value. - DeWitt Clinton

Open-sourcing GAE SDK was laudable and necessary, but is apples-and-oranges comparison to EC2/S3. I felt it was a dishonest (or confused) cheap shot to smear Amazon by saying "Google open sourced their SDK, unlike Amazon". And it places the emphasis more on "open source", when open standards and open protocols are even more important. - Joshua Allen

Joshua, agreed. You're right. That's apple and oranges. See my comment just above this though, that I think it is critical that companies make the interfaces and protocols freely implementable -- the infrastructure that powers them not necessarily so. - DeWitt Clinton

To add to Joshua's point, my point is that if you are going to brag about giving away source code to prevent lock-in then you should be Open Sourcing the entire stack not just the thin layer of SDK at the top of the stack. Joshua is right though, on the Web it is most important that the protocols and data exchange formats are Open. As Tim O'Reilly said, data is the new Intel Inside. - Dare Obasanjo

I disagree with the part about open sourcing the SDK to be unimportant entirely, citing the example that the SDK alone was sufficient to build a application-compatible layer on top of EC2. But Joshua really nailed it -- in the cloud, it is the protocols and formats that are more important than the even the source code. (The source code simply stands in as good reference material, and a convenient proxy to issue a license against.) - DeWitt Clinton

Heh, you added to your comment. I think we're in violent agreement about that, then. - DeWitt Clinton