Open Standards are not enough to prevent lock in

[Brian Suda]

I read this article,
http://involve.jisc.ac.uk/wpmu/oss-watch/2007/11/30/open-standards-do-not-always-prevent-lock-in/

http://tinyurl.com/2h3h86

The gist of it was that open standards are not enough, you need
openness at all portions of the stack.

This reminds me of the "i want to export my email" option in alot of
clients. Sure if i want to switch from thunderbird to apple mail or
something else, all i need to do is find my .mbox file. That is a unix
standard that apps tend to use. The problem is that it doesn´t also
export all the metadata. I want my mail filter rules, my preferences,
the spam database and others.

So is just having open formats, like APML, or OPML enough? it is a
great start, but when it comes to workflows, if the whole chain, from
the machine to the data, is not open, then there are potential for
problems.

thoughts?
-brian

--
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk

[Paul Jones]

I guess this ties back to your previous question about the Virtual Machine standard. Although it is something that many users don't deal with, it would be an important part of a stack for implementing "top-to-bottom" data portability.

Paul.

[Chris Messina]

This is certainly an interesting point and one that we must be self-reflective towards.

It leads me to two thoughts:

1) how does supporting "open" formats and standards imperil innovation (since formats et al should ideally be relatively concise and not exhaustive, or you quickly make the likelihood of getting full support for all aspects of your portable data next to none, which both reduces the value of the portability and imposes a great deal of costs on innovators).

2) how do we find the balance in portability "vehicles" to be at once expressive and as at the same time, not burdensome or encumbering on the future? For example, standards should likely be like language and evolve over time, but then how do you avoid single system meiopia or worse, standards that sprout like mushrooms all over the place? 

Clearly the marketplace plays an important role here, but I think Brian's point is well taken: how do we better breed openness by way of delivering a better rate of organizational success?

Chris

Sent from my iPhone

[Josh Patterson]

Brian,
Yeah, I agree. open formats are good, but you need an open model/stack
--- like the one that came about for tcp/ip, but now for data on the
web. I believe it will come to look like one large distributed
filesystem / database hybrid, at least from a logical view. WRFS is a
sketch towards that direction (albeit early and needing much
refinement), feel free to make notes on the wiki of ideas or reference
materials like this. Paul, Josh Lewis and I are cranking away on
constructing a joint reference prototype, feel free to take a look.

Josh

On Dec 3, 6:20 am, "Brian Suda" <brian.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I read this article,http://involve.jisc.ac.uk/wpmu/oss-watch/2007/11/30/open-standards-do...