Tantek Çelik on Going Beyond Proprietary Content

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Video available through http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/01/creating-propri.html


Description

"Çelik starts off by defining the open web as consisting of two components — access to your data in both directions (reading and writing) and portability. He then goes on to argue that proprietary services, which are more concerned with content ownership, are ultimately, “like writing in sand — you might as well be building sandcastles… the sandcastles get wiped out by the next wave and that’s exactly what will happen to your content.”

Digg, on the other hand, puts all your submissions, your Digg created content, comments etc, under a Creative Commons public domain declaration, which means anyone is free to do anything they want with what you post.

And Çelik isn’t just talking, he’s putting these ideas into motion like on the made mandatory microformats wiki which now, much like the Digg example, requires that all contributed content be placed in the public domain.

Other highlights from the video include Çelik’s observation that proprietary tools/formats almost always precede open formats, but in doing so serve as a nice way of mapping out what aspects of the format are useful and which aren’t. Market pressure then eventually forces an open alternative that gets to skip the R&d stage and head right to the aspects that the market has already determined are most important. In other words, proprietary tools tend to pave the way for open tools." (http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/01/creating-propri.html)