Open 2.0 - Grauniad, BBC and New Media Doublespeak

Update - and the Guardian's Open Access to it's own treasure trove of data is not fully open, notes Dave Winer with surprise:

If it were actually open they'd announce it to all developers at the same moment, so we could all try it out at the same time on a level playing field, not give an advance to their favorites. In the press release they talk about developers who got an early look. Fine. It wasn't open then, that's for sure. Is it open now?

Well: "API key approvals will be granted on a very limited basis, so please don't be offended if we fail to reply to you or don't approve your request in the short term. You can be assured, however, that we intend to open the service more widely soon."

C'mon Dave, you weren't that naive surely. "Open" in New Media speak doesn't mean "Open" as in "here are the keys to loot the Aladdin's cave we've spent decades building and represents our entire future value potential".

On a similar vein, there was a rather interesting debate about "Open BBC" last night (Twitterstream is here on #openbbc), interesting insofar as its interesting to parse the Twitter comments between:

- Open advocates who do understand the issues around untramelled open-ness
- muppets who just drink the kool aid
- those who want to get their grubby paws on the loot

I leave it to you to read and decide who is in the vast minority.......

There is a serious discussion to be had on the "ROI of Open-ness", as there are plusses and minusses involved. For example:

- On the plus side, Twitter has shwon that is has "out-innovated" Facebook and others by allowing Darwinian evolution of its platform, making it an easier to use system than its competitors. But it does keep the parts that are its core value proposition (unified comms platform) closed

- On the minus side, its still not clear how businesses that open the kimono benefit as their competitors exploit the IP without necessarily handing back benefit. The Open Source movement works as a non-profit gifting ecosystem, but when for-profits enter the game theory changes completely as they take but do not recycle wealth created.

Take the "Its public data in the BBC, so give us the keys to the kingdom" lobby. True it is public data - but then, if you build a business that profits from it, isn't much of that wealth gained also the public's? In other words, shouldn't the public have a large stake in any company that uses public assets for private gain? Otherwise its just tantamount to scraping the commons for personal gain, surely

Or am I just being closed minded......

However, the really key debate that emerged from that BBC session is defining the difference between New Media and Future Media