“OPEN” really? … I mean Really?
So a bunch of people are throwing around the word “Open” lately and I have to admit I am more than a bit offended by its abuse.
I think the biggest irony currently is Adobe’s use of the word considering their PDF’s are some of the most closed items on the planet as far as govt publications are concerned. I think I would be more supportive if they actually OPENED that up.
And of course you have another noxious offender Facebook claiming their API is “OPEN.” Check out Louis Grey’s post of definitions http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/10/blurry-picture-of-open-apis-standards.html
I purposely stopped saying “TRANSPARENT Government” a few years back even though I had been using the term since 2004. (and had registered just about every domainURL version under the sun) Basically, I realized just having the data available somewhere buried on the site was not enough. It had to be easily accessible as well. So I jumped on the “OPEN” bandwagon. And started referring to “Open Government” instead of transparent government.
But I also found that term to be lacking as well and created a new word for what I wanted. CITABILITY – which goes beyond available or accessible. It has set definitions. It must be citable also. This has a long and fairly well defined history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citable – So it creates a stronger term that is less subject to abuse. And defines a specific goal.
Add to the term “citability” – the specifications on the website citability.org and the implementations being posted to citability.pbworks.com and you have a more enforceable definition. That I am hoping a community of people will support.
Also add in the time date stamp portions and you have versioning and accountability. This makes “citability” goes way past the generalized concept of “OPEN” and creates something specific.
I think we need to be careful about using such fluid terms…
(and since a silona blog post wouldn’t be complete without a reverse navel gazing about how I make be doing the same mistake i am critiquing…)
Which makes me ponder posting a better definition of “OPENBANKING” I want to incorporate the best of OPEN in regards to banking to create EARNED trust.
Time to make a quick ruleset. Since I am inventing this term and all and being one of the first to blog about it. (at least so far as I have found anyhow 
)
Now Adobe… let’s talk about Citability and standards in regards to your PDF’s… I’m sure we can figure something out to not just help you to be OPEN but Citable as well. I know you guys aren’t actually evil in regards to this just monolithic which results in being slow.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Are you getting a little ahead of yourself? “Open” is an adjective; it has meaning only when conjoined with some noun. To take the Adobe example, I’ve seen them recently say “open source” about some of their code, and so far a I can tell, the “source” in question really is “open.” I haven’t seen them claim that PDF itself is “open,” did I miss that? And I certainly haven’t seen them claim that “everyone who ever uses PDF anywhere is open with their data.”
On the other hand, I’ve also seen them, like many, using the phrase “open API,” lately, and I have rather more reservations about that. I think most people who use the phrase mean “you can connect to my web API,” and maybe even “I’ve documented it for you.” They don’t tend to mean “you can help define the API” (some do, but not all, and I don’t think Adobe does, since we’re using that example). As an open sourcerer, I’d rather the “open” adjective be held to something in the “you can contribute” neighborhood, but I did also live through the 80’s era of “open standards,” which were at best only slightly communitarian, and mostly just meant “not IP-encumbered.”
Now “citability” is somewhere in the same corner of the cosmos as “open,” but I think it would be a shame to yoke the two. Citability is actually a much stronger word, with a reasonably fair chance of making sense, all by itself, right out of the gate, without conjoined nouns or lengthy explanations. It’s pretty clear that PDF is not presently “citable” (for example, because it’s not internally addressable). That’s worth some discussion, but trying to retrofit those notions to the “open” moniker seems counterproductive, but if we do it, it would still need that noun … “open reference points,” or something like that.
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I wasn’t trying to say that citability is the same as “open” nor am I interested in yolking the terms together. I was using citability as a good example of how things should be done. It is why I created a new term that wasn’t in the dictionary.
Instead I was saying we need to be careful about how we formulate our terms as terms like “open” because can be used improperly as Adobe and Facebook are doing.
Though I do agree with you that the way to save “open” is to make sure it is bonded to another term. Like OpenBanking can mean something specific as OpenSource does (though often disputed.) And I need to get on it in regards to defining that. Though I do have doubts about OpenBanking as a term because of how undefined the word “open” is…
Adobe is claiming (in Adverts that are DC specific so I’m not surprised you haven’t seen them) that they do “Open Govt” and that is what I am referring too. http://blogs.adobe.com/adobeingovernment/2009/04/open_government_in_action.html
It is not that they are wrong. It is just not how a group of us in the Govt 2.0 word have been using the term.