The Evolution of
“Open”
Byrne Reese, Open Source Guy
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Byrne Reese
Product Manager, Blogger, Open Source
Guy, Hacker, Open Web Evangelist,
Entrepreneur, Father, Teacher.
http://www.majordojo.com
http://byrne.vox.com
http://twitter.com/byrnereese
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A History of Open
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Dennis Richie
Ken Thompson
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Unix
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Not open source.
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Richard Stallman, a.k.a. RMS
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“Free beer”
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Free Speech
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commercialization
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GNU
“GNU is Not Unix”
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Free Software Foundation
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GPL
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The genesis of
“Open Source”
as we know it today
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Believe it or not...
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Not open enough.
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Best form of advocacy: doing.
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Linus Torvalds
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Linux
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“Until the Linux development,
everyone believed that any software
as complex as an operating system
had to be developed in a carefully
coordinated way by a relatively
small, tightly-knit group of people.”
- Eric Raymond
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volunteer driven
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community driven
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Convergence of open source
and open standards that made
the Internet flourish.
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Open Source
Cheap Software
Start Ups
Services
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Software as a Service
negated our assumptions about
how software would be distributed.
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Siloed Data
PHOTO: silos
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Petting a cat the wrong way.
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“information
outlives software,
transcends software
and is more valuable
than software”
- Tim O’Reilly
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relevance of the license decreased
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importance of open data increased
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interconnectedness
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Enter:
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open source and blogging
informed the next generation of
online applications:
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Web 2.0
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APIs
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Mashups
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Cool.
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Cool, but not useful.
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Limited by standards
(or lack thereof)
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</history lesson>
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Lessons Learned
• communities can be trusted to build things
of value
• openness is not just about license, its about
the data too
• every attempt to be closed will be met by
forces to be open
• open tends to win
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Today
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The same pressures still exist.
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Everyone fighting to be the
center of gravity
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growing need for decentralization
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Action Streams
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Everyone wants to own something
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FriendFeed Plugin
On FriendFeed:
On Your Blog:
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Facebook Connect
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The convergence of
blogging & social networking
is surfacing a
new set of problems
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Identity
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Authentication
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?
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Leading the charge:
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In Summary
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• Blogging 2.0?
• There is still a lot to be done to solve these
problems.
• Open Source is about helping and
contributing.
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fin.
Questions?
byrne@sixapart.com
http://www.majordojo.com/
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