While I still haven’t gotten time to fully grok dchud’s Open Data is not the point, some more posts regarding the importance of open data have come about. While I agree with dchud that it’s definitely not the whole story, it is an important one.
Alf over at Hublog posts some of the replies he’s gotten from services when trying to access his own data or aggregate data. The general response is “sorry, that data is too valuable”. Nothing surprising or new, though access to at least ones own data should be more acceptable.
Then there is a nice response to Dare’s Open Source is Dead, titled Open Data matters more than Open Source.
Open Source will still matter, of course (especially for server-side work), but it won’t be an important battle ground any more. Until we can convince (or force) web sites to embrace and standardize on Open Data formats — XML, JSON, or even CSV, as appropriate — we will be in some ways even more locked in than we were in the bad old desktop days. Celebrate Open Source’s victory, by all means, but get ready for an even bigger and bloodier battle over the next 10-20 years.
It’s well worth reading the comments about the difference between server-side and client-side and the freedoms each allow.
I’m still not at the point where I can probably write eloquently on the issue, but if you have the time I recommend reading the above and following links. ‘Open’ in any form is becoming more and more important whether it’s source, data, access or identity.