The Open Source Alternative: Understanding Risks and Leveraging Opportunities

Chapter 9. Open Source and Open Standards

Now that open source has become a media buzzword, it has been applied to many things to which it is completely irrelevant. Now we see discussions of "open source" biotechnology, open source religious texts, and even open source yoga. Open source, though, is a paradigm fairly specific to software. Its basis is the idea that people should have access to a human-readable form of information or technology, not just an unreadable form.

What most people mean when they apply the term "open source" to items other than software is instead an open standard or public domain. Much has been written on open standards, and a full discussion of them is beyond the scope of this book. However, the interaction of open source and open standards is significant, so it is important to understand the broad strokes.^[116]

Standards formulation is much older than open source and older than software itself. A time-worn example is that of nuts and bolts. At the beginning of the industrial era, every nut and bolt had unique threads. Of course, that meant every nut could be used only with its own bolt.Eventually, industry developed a standardized^[117] system of thread manufacture, so nuts and bolts could be interchanged. It is generally accepted that standardization of technology is good. The question is: Whose standard? We have all experienced competing standards, like those underlying VHS and Betamax videotapes or the Macintosh and PC platforms. Lack of standardization ...