Think more about the definition of open

[pdurbin]

Currently the "O" in SLOPI is defined as "Open: Messages are in the open" but there are a couple great blog posts I'd like to think more about:

• https://blog.foad.me.uk/2019/05/15/from-open-source-to-open-communication/
• http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2018/11/09/the-evolution-of-open/

[pdurbin]

Over at #2 (comment) @izahn asked a logical question: What is the difference between public and open?

[pdurbin]

In 5494249 I just added what I think is an interesting take on "transparent" vs "open" from Mozilla. The following is from https://wiki.mozilla.org/Working_open (emphasis mine):

• transparent: Public, but not necessarily enabling participation.
• passively transparent: Not private; decisions aren’t actively hidden, but are difficult to locate. They may not even be documented. This is usually not done intentionally.
• actively transparent: Everything is written down, is easily searchable and is locatable by interested parties. This requires intentional, sustained effort.
• open: Public and participatory. This requires structuring efforts so that "outsiders" can meaningfully participate (and become "insiders" as appropriate).

[pdurbin]

https://blog.foad.me.uk/2019/05/15/from-open-source-to-open-communication/

This post inspired me to open haystack/murmur#260

[pdurbin]

http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2018/11/09/the-evolution-of-open/

This blog post has all kinds of interesting stuff in it. Let me start with the following quote:

"A lot of us got our start when an internet connection was a novelty, computation was scarce and state was fragile. If you – like me – are a product of this time, “open” as in “open source” is likely to be a core part of your sense of personal safety and agency; you got comfortable digging into code, standing up your own services and managing your own backups pretty early, because that was how you maintained some degree of control over your destiny, how you avoided the indignities of data loss, corporate exploitation and community collapse.

“Open” in this context inextricably ties source control to individual agency. The checks and balances of openness in this context are about standards, data formats, and the ability to export or migrate your data away from sites or services that threaten to go bad or go dark."

That's more or less how I define "open" I guess. I want agency. I don't want vendor lock in. I want the ability to liberate my data from third party services.

However, the post goes on, explaining how people like me are fairly privileged:

"“Working in the open”, in a world where computation was scarce and expensive, meant working in front of an audience that was lucky enough to go to university or college, whose parents could afford a computer at home, who lived somewhere with broadband or had one of the few jobs whose company opened low-numbered ports to the outside world; what it didn’t mean was doxxing, cyberstalking, botnets, gamergaters, weaponized social media tooling, carrier-grade targeted-harassment-as-a-service and state-actor psy-op/disinformation campaigns rolling by like bad weather."

I haven't had to worry about gamergate, etc. but I sympathize with all of the above.

Let's hear more about a new way of defining "open":

"In contrast, a more recent turn on the notion of openness is one of organizational or community openness; that is, openness viewed through the lens of the accessibility and the experience of participation in the organization itself, rather than unrestricted access to the underlying mechanisms. Put another way, it puts the safety and transparency of the organization and the people in it first, and considers the openness of work products and data retention as secondary; sometimes (though not always) the open-source nature of the products emerges as a consequence of the nature of the organization, but the details of how that happens are community-first, code-second (and sometimes code-sort-of, code-last or code-never). “Openness” in this context is about accessibility and physical and emotional safety, about the ability to participate without fear. The checks and balances are principally about inclusivity, accessibility and community norms; codes of conduct and their enforcement."

This all sounds great, of course, but I'm not sure that I would use the term "open" for this. I mean, you could, but I'd probably use a term like "inclusive" instead.

All this is to say that when I say "open" I mean "in the open". I mean the same as "public" if there can be agreement on that term. I'm talking about open access, about unfettered access to information. No paywall, no subscription necessary.

Again the blog post above is very interesting and I'm completely in favor of open source being more inclusive. There's a cool effort at https://opensourcediversity.org that's on my radar. But I'm talking about "in the open" when I call the "O" in SLOPI "open". I hope this helps. I think I'll close this issue. I'm happy to talk more about it though.

[pdurbin]

Before closing #7 I re-read "Considering the Use of Walled Gardens for FLOSS Project Communication" again and I forgotten how mush she says about the definition of "open". Here are some quotes (emphasis mine):

"Mailing lists also offer a technological openness, in other words a non-corporate-controlled, non-proprietary software system, ideally available under a FLOSS license. However, more recently, the FLOSS community has begun to ponder an additional perspective on openness: one that is defined by inclusivity and diversity of participation."

This is all great stuff, of course.

"For each category, we describe the alternatives in terms of the various 'openness' values described previously: openness via transparency, openness via licensing and non-corporate control, and openness via inclusivity and ease-of-use."

When I think of inclusivity I think of open source's long standing problem of being mostly white dudes. When I think of ease-of-use I think of the traditional lack of and importance of designers in open source.

Finally, there's this quote (emphasis mine):

"We posit that when walled gardens are chosen for communication, the community has decided to subjugate the FLOSS value of openness via transparent, non-corporate, FLOSS-licensed communication for a different - and equally compelling - definition of openness, namely an openness of easy participation and diverse contribution. One way that these competing values can both 'win' is for the project to provide avenues for increased transparency after the walled garden is chosen, specifically by providing easy-to-find, publicly available, downloadable archives of the communication that happens inside the walled garden."

I guess I need to be more open in my definition of open. 😄 To be clear, in the context of SLOPI "open" is meant to mean "in the open" or "like an open book" or "open access". I applaud efforts like https://opensourcediversity.org for what I would probably call inclusivity or diversity. I also applaud efforts like https://opensourcedesign.net for what I would probably call usability, accessibility, ease of use, and improved user experience.