Just across the water from where I sit, Tim O’Reilly has been delivering the opening keynote at his company’s European Open Source Convention (EuroOSCON). Jon Mountjoy is amongst those blogging the conference, and reports that Tim has been asking;

“What does it mean if our applications and APIs are free but the data is not?”

A good question, with a multitude of answers, none of which are particularly pleasant. Lock in? Monopoly? Stagnation? Extortionate pricing?

Jon goes on;

“This is quite an important question. We often think of open source in terms of source code only, but this is wrong. As [Tim] mentioned in the talk, ’software is performed rather than distributed.’ Increasingly we are using software platforms built using open source components (say Google on Linux), but no longer distributed. What does this mean to open source and the production of open source and the community around open source?”

…

“But this brings us back to the main point. It’s the data that’s starting to matter more and more, even if it is user-generated.”

…

“In terms of data, what do we do? What if all our software is open, and all our protocols and APIs are open, what does it matter as the companies still own us if they have the data.”

He’s a clever man, that Tim O’Reilly, and clearly thinking along lines very close to those we’re setting about implementing here at Talis.

Technorati Tags: EuroOSCON, EuroOSCON2006, open data, Tim OReilly, Talis Community Licence, Talis Community License, Talis Platform, Trust, Web 2.0

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