Open platforms.
Open networks.
Open devices.
OpenSocial.
Open APIs.
OpenID.
Do you think the term “open” is being used with some recklessness of late? Or perhaps if not recklessness, with a certain degree of definitional liberty?
In case I haven’t mentioned it before, our award-winning ANTHEM™ platform is open. That means that any company, carrier, content provider, ad network, media company or OEM that wants to use our platform is free to do so. OF COURSE they are free to do so, because we are in business to make money, and the more people who use our platform, the better. But that isn’t what “open” means.
Our open platform works seamlessly with every other open platform because it is open. It interfaces to Google’s Android open platform that is going to run on Verizon’s open network, (as soon as someone creates an open device) and using our open APIs, any developer can build a widget for our widget that any user can put on their Facebook page that enables them to access any social networking site in the OpenSocial alliance right from their mobile phone.
The added value, of course, is that our open platform, due to the fact that it was architected with a superset of openness from the start, automatically interfaces to every other open platform on the planet.
And we wrote it in Erlang. So it is also massive.
So yeah.
I am wondering about two things:
1.) What is the definition of “open”?
2.) Is it really better to be “open”?
1.) What does “open” mean? It’s recent banality invites scrutiny.
Now, I know there is a definition of Open Source. The distribution terms of open-source software must meet 10 criteria to be considered truly open source. But that is pretty specific and is not necessarily what companies mean when they talk about their “open platform.”
How about an open standard?
From this wikipedia link:
“The terms “open” and “standard” have a wide range of meanings associated with their usage. The term “open” is usually restricted to royalty-free technologies while the term “standard” is sometimes restricted to technologies approved by formalized committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis.”
There is apparently no concensus on the definition of “open standard” but there are no fewer than nine specific definitions, which is at least a valiant attempt to help. Ironically, if France’s definition differs from Spain’s definition, (and it does) that actually creates a more fractious environment and greater friction in the market.
To me, the best example of an open standard working for the greater good is the W3C. Here is their stated mission:
“The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability.”
Can you imagine having half of the internet using a competing standard to HTTP? Not good. So, yay the W3C, open = good.
But that is not the spirit of the current enthusiasm for openness. This is about accreting value using “openness” as a strategem. The best example from history I could think of is the .pdf format, which is an “open format.” It was developed by Adobe as a proprietary format and later provided on a royalty-free basis, though Adobe holds the patents.
Here is the history of PDF openness from an Adobe Technical Standards Evangelist:
http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/leonardr/history-of-pdf-openness/
More interesting is this interview from Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen from September 2003.
This quote sums it up:
“We realized that if we could provide more applications around the PDF as the file format and Acrobat Reader as the rendering platform, not only could we make many customers much more efficient and productive, but it could be a valuable revenue opportunity.”
The recent push by for-profit enterprises for opening everything is based on the desire to become a de facto standard around which an ecosystem of value can be built. The beauty of calling your system/network/platform/software/hardware/whatever open is that you push the cost of building that ecosystem of value to an army of enthusiastic developers, which has the added benefit of percolating the most innovation to the top. Or so the theory goes. But that brings me to my second question:
2.) Is it really better to be “open”?
Inside every entrepreneur is a monopolist. The more value he or she can consolidate, the better. As an entrepreneur, the ultimate accomplishment is for your product or service to become the de facto standard, which is a form of, and next best thing to, a legal monopoly.
How would you like to reap the value from the British East India Company, which you may remember was set up as a legal trading monopoly? How would you like to have built Standard Oil? Or pre-1980 AT&T? DeBeers? TicketMaster? TCI? Microsoft? Even the beloved Apple, so admired by so many Appleheads everywhere, was accused of creating a vertical monopoly with their closed music delivery value chain. (Which many devotees love.)
Let me answer for you: “Yes, I would like to own DeBeers.” (Owning all da beers in the world would rock. I kid.)
Like I mentioned about the W3C, there are plenty of examples where creating an open standard – say, XML – which did not financially benefit a single owner of the standard nonetheless benefited an entire industry of single owners as part of the ecosystem. In this way, the standard is the glue that binds the various parts of the ecosystem.
But if you are one of the parts of the ecosystem, can you effectively promote your standard as the glue just by calling it open? Or is your value naturally locked inside your four walls?
I just read an interesting post from Giles Bowkett that argues that “…social networking web sites aren’t platforms – they’re nightclubs… if you’re building a Facebook app, you’re building a sound system you can never take out of the club. Spending money on something which won’t work anywhere else only makes sense if the payoff is immediate. It’s not really an investment, because assuming any given social network will persist for any given amount of time defies history.”
Read the whole thing - it’s good:
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2007/11/facebook-apps-facebook-trap.html
Facebook’s very non-secret strategy clearly runs counter to that notion – they appear to believe they will persist. They want to “own the social graph.” That is far reaching. It means they want to be the first link on the communication value chain, as in “the first place you always go to execute your personal communication.” If creating the Facebook “platform” and calling it “more open than your open platform” accelerates that end goal, then it is a reasonable ploy.
It’s like Google saying “we want to own search.” And, given their market share, they fairly do. Does that make Google a monopoly or a de-facto standard? Does it matter?
Not to me. I would just point out that where all this “openness” leads is ultimately to one company winning what they see as a zero-sum game because there is, after all, a finite number of consumers, and the goal of any for-profit enterprise is to maximize value by accreting more value to themselves.
My last thought on this, then, is that value accretes to utility, not to openness. Think about, for instance, how difficult it is to deal with wireless carriers as a vendor. If Verizon Wireless presents developers with an “open” network that isn’t really truly open, but it is “more open” than all other wireless carriers and thus comparatively reduces friction between developers and the Verizon consumers they want to reach, then they will have achieved their goal of accreting more value to their network. But even attracting developers doesn’t get ‘er done - ultimately what makes or breaks a company, open or not, is their ability to engage consumers, and consumers have proven time and again (I bought a very-closed iPhone) that they don’t care what you call it as long as it works.