Science in the Open » Blog Archive » Open is a state of mind

"I often return to the question of what 'Open' means and why it matters. Indeed the very first blog post I wrote focussed on questions of definition. Sometimes I return to it because people disagree with my perspective. Sometimes because someone approaches similar questions in a new or interesting way. But mostly I return to it because of the constant struggle to get across the mindset that it encompasses.Most recently I addressed the question of what “Open” is about in a online talk I gave for the Futurium Program of the European Commission (video is available). In this I tried to get beyond the definitions of Open Source, Open Data, Open Knowledge, and Open Access to the motivation behind them, something which is both non-obvious and conceptually difficult. All of these various definitions focus on mechanisms - on the means by which you make things open – but not on the motivations behind that. As a result they can often seem arbitrary and rules-focussed, and do become subject to the kind of religious wars that result from disagreements over the application of rules.In the talk I tried to move beyond that, to describe the motivation and the mind set behind taking an open approach, and to explain why this is so tightly coupled to the rise of the internet in general and the web in particular. Being open as opposed to making open resources (or making resources open) is about embracing a particular form of humility. For the creator it is about embracing the idea that – despite knowing more about what you have done than any other person –  the use and application of your work is something that you cannot predict. Similarly for someone working on a project being open is understanding that – despite the fact you know more about the project than anyone else – that crucial contributions and insights could come from unknown sources. At one level this is just a numbers game, given enough people it is likely that someone, somewhere, can use your work, or contribute to it in unexpected ways. As a numbers game it is rather depressing on two fronts. First, it feels as though someone out there must be cleverer than you. Second, it doesn’t help because you’ll never find them ... For most people, for most of history, it was only possible to reach and communicate with small numbers of people. And that means in turn that for most kinds of work, those networks were simply not big enough to connect the creator with the unexpected user, the unexpected helper with the project. The rise of the printing press, and then telegraph, radio, and television changed the odds, but only the very small number of people who had access to these broadcast technologies could ever reach larger numbers. And even they didn’t really have the tools that would let them listen back. What is different today is the scale of the communication network that binds us together. By connecting millions and then billions together the probability that people who can help each other can be connected has risen to the point that for many types of problem that they actually are.  That gap between 'can' and 'are', the gap between the idea that there is a connection with someone, somewhere, that could be valuable, and actually making the connection is the practical question that underlies the idea of 'open'. How do we make resources, discoverable, and re-usable so that they can find those unexpected applications? How do we design projects so that outside experts can both discover them and contribute? ... Being open goes in two directions. First we need to be open to unexpected uses. The Open Source community was first to this principle by rejecting the idea that it is appropriate to limit who can use a resource. The principle here is that by being open to any use you maximise the potential for use. Placing limitations always has the potential to block unexpected uses. But the broader open source community has also gone further by exploring and developing mechanisms that support the ability of anyone to contribute to projects. This is why Yergler says 'open source' is not a verb. You can license code, you can make it 'open', but that does not create an Open Source Project. You may have a project to create open source code, an 'Open-source project', but that is not necessarily a project that is open, an 'Open source-project'. Open Source is not about licensing alone, but about public repositories, version control, documentation, and the creation of viable communities. You don’t just throw the code over the fence and expect a project to magically form around it, you invest in and support community creation with the aim of creating a sustainable project. Successful open source projects put community building, outreach, both reaching contributors and encouraging them, at their centre. The licensing is just an enabler.In the world of Open Scholarship, and I would include both Open Access