“The battle of Open vs. Closed is not a zero sum game. Both have their time. It’s a sin wave. First, closed, proprietary solutions come to define a new way of fulfilling a use case and doing business. They solve a problem simply and elegantly and blaze a path to market awareness, acceptance and commercialization. Open, however, always follows. Whether it’s a year, a decade or a century, Open. Always. Wins. The only question is how long, as an industry, are we going to keep our tail tucked between our legs in front of the the great giant proprietary platform of the moment or are we going to get our act together to ensure the “Time to Open” is as short as possible. It takes courage, co-ordination and vision, but we can all play our part to shorten the time frame between the invention of a proprietary app and the absorption of that value into the open web platform.”
The Open Web Is Dead – Long live the Open Web | Chris Saad
My brother-in-law pointed out that Saad actually misses some lessons from history: open systems & communities actually lead the way. It’s the later closed, proprietary versions that commercialize those behaviors, seemingly-generally by packaging them in a way that’s palatable for mainstream users, before being disrupted by open.
Open, closed, open…
