

No, Your Service isn't "Open" - michaelchisari
http://buddycloud.com/cms/content/no-your-service-isnt-open

======
ZeroMinx
I give my deepest respect for anyone who fights for open software. I wish I
would do more..

I've never met RMS, and as far as I call tell he might be a bit weird, but I
still owe him the greatest degree of respect. Thanks to him, and to people
like him, I was able to grow up with software I could hack on my own. I
started learning proper programming in the early 90's, and I could do that
using free (I'm not going to qualify what type of free we're talking about. If
you don't know, you're not on HN) software and the reason is for people like
him who lead the way

(ok, this post might be more about protocols rather than software, but the
main gist of my point still remains)

~~~
Semiapies
Not really. RMS has harshly rejected terms like "open source" for free
software.

"Openness" is a relative and meaninglessly vague term in this context.
Anything short of a open-sourced program and completely public data is less
"open" than some alternative. The complaints that 99.99% of people make about
APIs have less to do with "openness" than poor communication by the provider
in the forms of bad documentation and unwarned changes.

TFA: " _Facebook Connect is not open. It's controlled by one company._ "

Yes, because if it was another company, _you wouldn't care about this API_.
The API only _matters_ to anyone _because_ it's Facebook.

I adore free software, but "openness" is a lousy justification for trying to
work up umbrage about the difficulties of working in a parasitic developer
ecosystem.

~~~
ZeroMinx
There are plenty of words in this particular universe that are thrown around a
lot. You mention "openness". Another big one is "freedom". You can discuss to
great length what these words mean, but I'm not going down that route tonight.

I don't know specifically what RMS has said and has not said. For the most of
it I'm not interested. What I am interested in are the actions. Like him or
not, but RMS has clearly done good things for anyone who believes computers
should be devices that you and I are free to hack on on your own.

(I'm carefully avoiding your TFA quote because I have nothing useful to
comment on that. Yes, I agree that the API only has value because it's coming
from this one company. I don't really think this has much to do with
openness).

~~~
Semiapies
I'm not really concerned about RMS. I just pointed out that he isn't about
"open".

To the extent that you're fond of free software and RMS, that's nice, but the
topic is TFA.

~~~
ZeroMinx
Alright, we're discussing "open" vs "free". Right now I don't care too much
about semantics..

For anyone reading this that don't know what we're on about , read -->
[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-
point.h...](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)

(edit: I generally agree with RMS's points. I might confuse "open" and "free".
For anyone not native to English these words might be interchangeable. I'm not
a native English speaker. It becomes clearer when you define the words such as
done in [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-
point.h...](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html) ,
but in a day to day conversation, it's easy to get the exact definitions
wrong)

~~~
Semiapies
" _Alright, we're discussing "open" vs "free"._ "

No, we're not discussing one thing vs. another, we're discussing _different
things_. That is a whole other situation entirely.

------
michaelchisari
Maybe we should all start stressing the difference between "Open" and simply
"Available"

~~~
jdp23
Michael, do you also see Appleseed, Diaspora, OneSocialWeb and Buddycloud as
part of a "federated social network" movement?

Are there any concrete steps the different projects are taking to work
together?

~~~
michaelchisari
Most definitely, I think we all see ourselves that way. There was a Federated
Social Web conference in July that was pretty well attended by the different
projects, and I believe a follow-up event is in the early planning stages. We
also have a federated social web mailing list, with w3c representation.

We're all interested in inter-operability. It's still too early to tell what
shape that will take, we're all experimenting in different directions, but
from my take on it, the future looks bright for interoperability.

We may find ourselves with 3+ protocols early on, but they'll all be open,
documented and available to anyone, and the different projects hopefully will
try and support more than one protocol. But eventually, something will rise to
the top, it's just too early to tell what that will be at this point.

But that's not hindering anybody's progress, in fact, in a lot of ways, the
platform can be a lot more difficult to build than the protocol.

------
lurkinggrue
Am I the only one who found the like button and the disquis on that page
ironic?

------
DanLar75
Well in all fairness, I would assume that most API's and Services have some
form of disclaimer.

What TOTALLY 100% open service have you ever seen?

~~~
blantonl
This. Frankly, there has to be TOS around any API released, because there are
always nefarious uses just waiting to be exploited by non-"legit" consumers.

I realize that "legit" is a subjective term, so well, that is why TOS for
API's are needed.

~~~
michaelchisari
_This. Frankly, there has to be TOS around any API released, because there are
always nefarious uses just waiting to be exploited by non-"legit" consumers._

Actually, you can (and should) build protections against spam and improper use
into the protocol instead of relying on a centralized gatekeeper. All truly
open systems do this.

------
teilo
I really don't think there is anything to complain about here. When I hear
that an API is "open", I have always assumed that means that it is published,
and open to the public to use, both of which are true of the Twitter API.

However, I have never assumed that "open" means that I have a right to abuse a
publicly available API without getting banned for doing so.

