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Science

Open Content and Value Creation 110

Posted by michael from the choose-a-job-that-you'd-do-for-free dept.
Magnus Cedergren writes "Which are the driving forces behind the creation of Open Content? What value is created? That is the major questions I try to answer in my paper in the journal First Monday. I would like to thank all you people participating in my study in different ways."
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Open Content and Value Creation More

Open Content and Value Creation

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  • /me thinks soon we're going to be seeing NO Content...

  • *Yaaawn* (Score:5, Funny)

    by His name cannot be s ( 16831 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @08:58AM (#6587543) Journal
    Holy crap... That's like the antidote for a double shot venti latte!

    I just about fell asleep reading that. Wuff, time for another coffee.

    • More like the newest verion of Valum!

    • Re: Story Moderation (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 4of12 ( 97621 )

      Already gets done.

      If you look closely at the number of comments and the number of comments with high scores associated with the story.

      I wouldn't mind if the Slash code showed some nice graphics so I could more quickly find the hot stories. Something like larger pies for more comments, with colored sectors for fractions of high comments, etc.

  • A big difference between open content and open source is the lack of tools in the former. If I would start a literature encyclopedia based on the content of the Wikipedia [wikipedia.com] I could get started really fast. But once my visitors start adding contents and the Wikipedia changes, there are no real good standards to merge back the content. A fork seems unavoidable.

    A good XML specification could help here, but currently open content usually means html files that can be freely copied. Until open content fixes this, the success of open source won't be copied.

    • Re:Open content != Open source (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yes but Wikipedia is very restrictive and it outsources a lot of its content and fucntionality to Google. Also, you can't write "original articles", that is articles that have never been published on the Internet before. I was writing about a A famous Afgani Scientist but I got it deleted because it failed the so called "google test". They also delete articles that they don't agree with hiding under a thin NPOV "mask". So if you want to write something new or contraversial, don't use wikipedia.

      • Re:Open content != Open source (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dze ( 89612 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @10:20AM (#6588327) Homepage

        So who was this "famous Afgani Scientist"?

        Wikipedia does not "outsource" content and functionality to Google. Sure, searching Wikipedia is probably easier with Google than with its search engine, but there's a lot of sites in that boat. As for the content, many public domain articles are found via Google and incorporated within Wikipedia. Sure, people use the Internet as a research tool, they also use printed works, their own knowledge and contribute photos or diagrams.

        I have found Wikipedia and the NPOV (neutral point of view) principle to work very well in practice. I think you may be missing the point of Wikipedia, which is to create a collection of generally accepted knowledge, not to publish "new or contraversial" material.

  • Hunh? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Steve G Swine ( 49788 )
    I would like to thank all you people participating in my study in different ways.
    What different ways are you considering to thank the participants?

    I take it airtight legal rights to the fruits of their labor is not an area into which your gratitude would extend?

  • Because it's science (Score:5, Informative)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:06AM (#6587603) Homepage Journal

    We try to make as much of our work available on our site [utah.edu] to the public because 1) It's science and 2) We are funded through federal grants/taxpayer $$'s and 3) We hope that work we do will help us and others to better understand vision, pathological processes in vision and possibly to rescue vision loss. Another vision educational site can be found here [utah.edu].

  • There is none.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:06AM (#6587605)
    As a musician in a symphony and a band, I'll say there is little to create content for free. I'll play for free, but I dont make a symphony.

    I also play in a jazz quartet (when we have a gig) playing Alto sax, Tenor sax, and B(flat) clarinet. If we played for free all the time, we couldnt afford new music or repairs on our instrument. We do a gig or 2 at nursing homes (goodwill and stuff ;-) but we usually like to get paid.

    Also, my mom's an artist. She's not the one to do "New Age" crap. She hates that stuff. Instead, she paints on canvases up to 5 feet long and 4 feet tall. She enjoys it with all her passion, but she couldnt do that free either. Wanna know why? Look for oil-based paints at an artist shop. Now calculate how much paint/brushes/canvas/frame it'd take to do it.

    Yeah, open content's nice. No royalties (sheet music), or public domain pictures would be nice. But it aint going to happen

    • Re:There is none.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Um, wrong. You give away your mp3s for free, and you're an unknown indy band, you get publicity in exchange. Then people will be more likely to go out and actually buy your CDs (unless you're such a small indy band you can't afford to produce CDs, of course) or come to your gigs. :)

      Open content fails really on only stuff that you can't really provide directly. Like making movies or something. And even then, there's nothing suggesting people won't be motivated to do it (if only for the fame value- or the re

      • people can make movies (Score:3, Interesting)

        by DrSkwid ( 118965 )

        and they do it pretty well with no money too

        http://www.bangshortfilmfestival.com/

        okay they aren't going to make a special effects action movie but there is more to the genre than massive budget film

        even CGI

        http://www.hardlight.couk.com/

    • Re:There is none.. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > Yeah, open content's nice. No royalties (sheet music), or public domain pictures would be nice. But it aint going to happen

      Don't be so pessimistic. Open content grows when the way to spread it becomes cheap. The open content in your mom's paints isn't the paint itself but rather her artistic culture and feelings.
      She could sell her oil paints while giving for free computer made ones. Tell her how to paint on a graphic tablet, so her art can spread (and maybe bring more money to the other paid activity

    • Re:There is none.. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:32AM (#6587844) Journal
      Also, my mom's an artist. She's not the one to do "New Age" crap. She hates that stuff. Instead, she paints on canvases up to 5 feet long and 4 feet tall. She enjoys it with all her passion, but she couldnt do that free either.

      That's hardly the same thing. Your mom can only give her canvases away once, and at a few thousand dollar a canvas, I can see why she'd be reluctant to. But she could give away reproductions of her work; putting them up on a website would cost next to nothing (ignoring for the moment the difficulty in scanning large paintings). Surprise... many artists already provide content this way, usually for free and with very few strings attached.

      I don't know about music... perhaps there is some free sheet music available; I've never looked. But dont think it'll never happen if a quick search won't turn up anything.
      • /* cost next to nothing */

        Yeah, until someone posts it up on /. :)

        Internet hosting does cost money and time. I recently had to give up my ISP because I could no longer afford it. (Now I post from work). I mean, I could afford it, but why? Consider that most of my time is on /., and /. really is worthless (it's fun to bait the damn FSF/GNU guys, but that gets old after awhile), and it's not worth $30/month, for sure.

    • Re:There is none.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:42AM (#6587927) Homepage Journal
      On the contrary. There is a fair amount of free "sheet music" available online now, in a number of open formats. It's mostly of older (pre-1930's) music, of course, for the obvious copyright reasons. You can find both classical and traditional (folk) music.

      There's a clear benefit for the musicians who do it. I started doing it so I could access my music quickly from anywhere on the Net. I've even had cases where I was in a fairly remote area, and someone asked "Can you play ...?" With my wireless portable computer, I could quickly get on the Net, find the sheet music, bring it up on the screen, and say "Yeah, we can play that."

      And it doesn't take a lot of brains to realize that the more people doing this, the better it is for all of us. You can get at my sheet music, I can get at yours, and we all benefit. Your average 8-year-old should understand this (though your average politician and CEO probably won't).

      Now if we could do something about the copyright laws that prevent working musicians from doing such useful things with music from the past 80 years or so. Then we could dispense with the bulky binders and fake books, and just use our wireless portable. But I can't see this happening soon.

      If the music publishers had a grain of sense, they'd do the obvious thing here. Set up web sites like the iTunes site, but for "sheet music", that charge a very small amount per page or per score. Encourage wireless coverage so that musicians will stop carrying around (copies of ;-) books of music and pay the $0.05 per page or whatever to get it on their screen. This could quickly put an end to the illicit copying of printed books, because it's so much more convenient.

      But, of course, publishers will have to be dragged kicking and screaming (and suing) into the 21st century. We're watching the RIAA attacks on file sharers very closely, and we expect that the publishers will do the same thing to musicians in the near future. Musicians playing recent material will be in trouble. We classical and trad folk musicians mostly won't, because our material is public domain. You can't copyright Bach's or O'Carolan's music. (Yeah, publishers do claim copyright on these, but unless they make it clear that it's only their edition that's covered, their claim is fraudulent.)

      The fact that musicians are doing this freely while publishers can't see the profit opportunity says a lot about economic theories based on a rational market ...

      • Re:There is none.. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @10:14AM (#6588258)
        >>>On the contrary. There is a fair amount of free "sheet music" available online now, in a number of open formats. It's mostly of older (pre-1930's) music, of course, for the obvious copyright reasons. You can find both classical and traditional (folk) music.

        I know there's lots of free sheet music, but playing in a jazz group, you need access to tons of numbers. Those numbers include all the way from the 1910's to now. I couldnt limit myself to just numbers in the public domain. We get paid to do songs THEY request.

        >>>If the music publishers had a grain of sense, they'd do the obvious thing here. Set up web sites like the iTunes site, but for "sheet music", that charge a very small amount per page or per score.

        Yeah, it makes perfect sense to us. But they dont think we matter.

        >>>Encourage wireless coverage so that musicians will stop carrying around (copies of ;-) books of music and pay the $0.05 per page or whatever to get it on their screen. This could quickly put an end to the illicit copying of printed books, because it's so much more convenient.

        For that price, I wouldnt mind being truthful if I got another score off of somebody else. I'd report it and pay the 5c per page (or whatever). Heck, for a 1$ per song, I'd be truthful if I downloaded it from somebody else-and liked it. All I care about is a high quality digital copy with no "protections".

        Sheet music => PNG, JPEG, PS, PDF
        Audio Music => RAW, FLAC, High VBR OGG/MP3
        Video => MPEG2, associated FREE(as in gpl) codecs

        Perhaps they'll learn.

      • Re:There is none.. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by pavon ( 30274 )
        This is different. Someone didn't create open content - they created copywritten content, which then went into the public domain after the term was over. In most cases the author used the opportunity to restrict copying to only paying customers, and thus made money on his creation.

        And yes, once a creative work has been created, it absolutly benifits society for everyone to have access to it. The question is whether an environment can be created where works are free to all and the author is still compensate
        • Interesting comments, but not to the point. I'll quote the original poster's definition:

          I define open content as content possible for others to improve and redistribute and/or content that is produced without any consideration of immediate financial reward -- often collectively within a virtual community.

          This EXACTLY fits the online-sheet-music example that I was talking about. For others to improve? Sure. If I put a tune online, say as a "fake book" transcription that's just melody and chords, seve

    • Re:There is none.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Godeke ( 32895 ) * on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:58AM (#6588105)
      I guess that depends on if you are talking about physical or digital. In the digital realm:

      (For pictures:)
      http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/ links/clipar t.html

      http://www.pdimages.com/

      (For sheet music:)

      http://www.sheetmusicarchive.net/

      http://www.sheetmusic1.com/new.great.music.html

      If I can google up counter examples in 30 seconds, I have a hard time with the phrase "But it aint going to happen". Somebody spends the time to collect, organize and provide the bandwith for these items. There is even more content in the text world (the free Wikipedia was mentioned, but there are other collections such as PlanetMath).

      So no, I don't expect the physical world will see a lot of free content, but once content is created, why *not* put some of it out on the net. I find a lot of my computer consulting business results from doing side work to "help out". The "foot in the door" method seems similar to a little fame for "open content". Heck it might even be profitable.
      • >>>>If I can google up counter examples in 30 seconds, I have a hard time with the phrase "But it aint going to happen".

        Wow. You got the same public domain music ANYBODY can get.

        >>>>Somebody spends the time to collect, organize and provide the bandwith for these items. There is even more content in the text world (the free Wikipedia was mentioned, but there are other collections such as PlanetMath).

        Math isnt copyrightable (software exempt). Yeah, it'd be nice if they got compensat

        • Re:There is none.. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Godeke ( 32895 ) *
          Actually, I do believe "this tripe". I make a decent living putting my foot into the doors of companies by providing inexpensive solutions up front. Over time I have built up a respectable customer base who come back to me for improvements and the like. I also contribute to open source and make a bit of my living by installing, configuring and customizing it.

          So if you write your own music and wish to keep it to yourself, that is fine. If you don't think it is good, even better that you keep it to yourself.
          • >>>Actually, I do believe "this tripe".

            I'm reffering the lingering "Make Content all free" mentality. I have no problem with free things, but understand if somebody wants something for their work.

            >>>I make a decent living putting my foot into the doors of companies by providing inexpensive solutions up front. Over time I have built up a respectable customer base who come back to me for improvements and the like.

            A very respectable job, as I do the same thing. Sad that I still cannot get
    • I think real artists do because the have to.

      I also think art is creating something new, something of you, something that might provoke thought and/or emotion.

    • Re:There is none.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by johnnyb ( 4816 )
      Open Content is not the same as doing everything for free.

      In fact, Open Content used to be the norm. Copyright laws are actually a fairly recent phenomena in history.

      If it costs X to produce a picture, there's nothing wrong with charging Y for it at a store. The problem is that if I'm an artist, too, and I make a copy for my friends using my own paints, and they pay me for cost of materials and time to do it, that should be legal, but it isn't.

      In fact, a _lot_ of art is one-time stuff. Painting murals

    • Re:There is none.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by PeteyG ( 203921 )
      Yeah, open content's nice. No royalties (sheet music), or public domain pictures would be nice

      There's plenty of public domain pictures available on government web sites. Anything relating to anything the government does (military stuff, criminals, national parks, public officials) is good to go.

      I also frequent an art site with an extensive collection of stock photography that is free for non-commercial use. I've used a fair bit of it in my open source art projects. It's only free if it's in the stock
      • I forgot to mention Space pictures. NASA has, like, a corner on space pictures. And they're all up for grabs.

        I think the only stipulation is that you can't claim copyrights on NASA images, and you've got to mention somewhere that the image is from NASA.
    • > But it aint going to happen

      http://commoncontent.org/ [commoncontent.org]

  • If copying is a particular problem for digital content (such as music), then instead of retailing it one copy at a time (on CDs), or giving up and distributing it as Open Content, why not sell it in one go first and then release it as Open Content?

    It's very similar to retail: everyone pays the same price, which is set by what the market will bear, but this time the price is set and the sale made, by the purchasers en masse - in advance of the release. This enables the creator to obtain the bulk of their

    • This doesn't make economic sense. Why would anyone pay in advance to buy an "original" version when they could wait until after it had been released and get it from someone else for less (or even for free)?

      The only CDs that could be sold this way would be those which support massive advance sales to people who are easily suckered by marketing but aren't technologically sophisticated. Can you say "Britney"?
      • I have been having thoughts similar to the grandparent post for awhile. I believe that it is incorrect to say that this does not make economic sense. That is only true if the content would be generated regardless of whether it is purchased.

        To show how it would work: A content producer (e.g. The Changelings, my favorite indy group) wants to make a CD. They put out a notice, letting fans know that they are working on a new CD. They say that they will release it to the public when contributions from the
        • You have described the street performers protocol. I personally think its great. Everyone pays what they want and gets paid what they want.

          The biggest problem is that many content producers are hoping to create the next big thing. An unknown will not be able to solicit a large fee for their work even if it turns out to be extremely popular. Under the current system if an unknown band makes a triple platinum record they are millionaires(maybe). But using the street performers protocol they only get pai

          • Though I have no experience in the music industry, I suppose even in today's system many unknown bands start with street performing (or something similar) and only after their first success get a serious contract.
          • you're only looking at half the picture. Because it is free for you and me to download does NOT mean the artist gives up ownership of copyright. I can publish my song on my website, give it away to the usenet and p2p community, and still sue the balls off any broadcaster who plays it without my consent. (This, BTW, is why the fools who call for abolition of copyright need a big whack with the clue stick.)

            If an artists asks for $10,000 to publish a work they can do so without giving up all rights to it. And

        • It also ignores the fact that people will and do support content creators which make stuff they like.

          Exactly. This is more or less how PBS gets along, right? "This Changelings CD was made possible by generous donations from abracadabra, annie,...koran, krysith,...zebraguy, zuzmatazz"

          No one is getting rich from PBS, but there are people making a living from it.

  • Tools. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:10AM (#6587647)
    Without proper tools, how can people hope to create content? I know someone is going to say, "Oh, we have the tools!" But are those tools easy and innovative to use? Most tools are shit, I'm sorry to say. Most tools aren't intuitive at all.

    What will drive open content is an open, standard, easy way of creating content. A suite, if you will. Until that exists, one can kiss open content goodbye, because the effort is largely not worth it.

    A case in point- look at game mods. When a game comes with an editor of sorts, people mod said games quite happily. TOOLS. That's the key.

    We have no tools.
    • Creating a tool (i.e. a convenient environment) for further developing content (or an OS sofware) is a part of those plus efforts you have to invest when you create open content. You also have to distribute it. OK easiness of distribution is one cause of open source's success, but more and more often you have to compete with other software. In the end it turns out that you have to pay to release your open source software/free content. Of course it pays off, if you can create revenues somehow (i.e. one of t

  • Open content creates use value (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chris Croome ( 24340 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:13AM (#6587676) Journal

    Open content, like free software, has use value but because anyone can reproduce and distribute it for next to no cost it doesn't really have much of an exchange value :-)

    This stuff has been discussed quite a bit at Project Oekonux [oekonux.org] and there is an interesting essay, GNU/Linux is not a thing of value - and that is fine! [opentheory.org] which does explore these ideas, however it is a bit hard to follow because it's only a partial translation of a German document [opentheory.org].

  • The trouble with closed content is that it's inaccessible to people who want to learn and do more in the future. Who knows what secrets we lost from ancient times, but we do have the stuff they shared, like statues. How important is that? Well, even WITH the statues it's hard to figure out how they did it. Knowing what was done would save us from reinventing the wheel after nearly 2000 years of "advances".

    • Re:Open content = a library of knowledge (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nonsense. We have plenty of "secret" stuff from ancient times, and the vast majority of the "open" stuff has been lost. Of course, the vast majority of "secret" stuff has been lost as well, but plenty of "secret" stuff got preserved precisely because it was secret and hidden away.

      We know exactly how statues were made.
      • Okay, but how were all the pyramids in Egypt made? How was the Sphinx manufactured? And why? And who did it and what were their techniques?

        We have many theories, but that's all they are...
        • Are you suggesting that building the Pyramids was kept secret from Egyptians? That it was built by some method that couldn't be figured out by the numerous people actually doing the building?

          I think the tendency is to lose knowledge that is so common that no one thinks there's a need to record it. It's likely that everyone in Egypt knew that they were being built and who was doing it.

  • The Success of Open Content Depends on 1 Thing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scorp1us ( 235526 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:17AM (#6587714) Journal
    If it is beneficial to the content creator as such.

    Here we will legitimately need DRM - in the way that it should be implemented. We need a away to track content to its creaor and not have people reassign the creator.

    Then we need a societial or business system that rewards these creators. Gaining an audiance these days is easy, gaining a following is not. Once people see it, and appreciate it, those they have to be able to reward the content creator in some way. Usualy this is money... But that's not what's happening now. We have this Open Content system going on now, and it works. But not as you expect. A lot of open source project leaders start or pick up projects for the recognistion, which then leads to employment and jobs. I've seen this time and time again. Case and point: Linus. At transmeta he was aloowed to work on the kernel all he wanted. At his previous employer too. The talent in open source generally gets recruited for f/t, p/t contract work...

    But we're not talking about software, we're talking about media (Ironically, both are covered by copyrights...) and until there is a system in t place (an Open Content recording studio, printing press, or the like) Open Content won't get too far. For it is only in the tangeble items that we buy that we are addured some kind of sales figures.

    • It doesn't seem to me that fraud, or people taking credit for another's work, is a problem on the internet, nor was it the concern of the paper. Not only is it NOT a problem, but I think it tells us a lot about the average integrity of the internet user, since content fraud fails to be much of a problem.

      Introducing DRM to open content will only weaken its 'openness' and the DRM will be a threat to the integrity of the average internet user. I would suspect that weakening DRM and strengthening education on

  • Job security (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Microsift ( 223381 )
    1. Write a story that no one is really interested in
    2. Submit story to slashdot
    3. ???
    4. Profit!

    my apologies to the poster whose brilliant business model parody I'm stealing.

  • A learning experience (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tcdk ( 173945 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:19AM (#6587737) Homepage Journal
    (I may be misunderstanding the term "OpenContent" - but I take it to mean "providing content, without making money on it").

    I started to review the books I had read, about 7 years ago. It mainly started of as a way to remember what I had read. It quickly became a way to practice my english (which isn't my primary language) and an excuse for maintaining a homepage with some actual content.

    My site has gone from static page to phpNuke (and my own extensions). My reviews has gone from a couple of stumbeling lines to fairly substansial things (when I feel like it).

    I've worked hard at promoting the site and I've learned a lot about online advertising in the process.

    Sometimes I can use a review as a soapbox, and vent a few of my feelings/ideas.

    All this while providing something that may be useful to other people.

    I've even spend a good deal of money on it, and the returnes from amazon(co.uk/.com) has been nothing compared to my expenses (mostly books/hosting).

    The questions for me is more like: Why aren't you making open content? It's does take time, but if you actually know something, you'll get better and more confident with this knowledge in the process of sharing.
    • The questions for me is more like: Why aren't you making open content?

      You answered your own question...

      I've even spend a good deal of money on it, and the returnes from amazon(co.uk/.com) has been nothing compared to my expenses (mostly books/hosting).
      • Yes, but the amount that I've spend is nothing, compared to most hobbies. And I would be buying the books anyway.

        Well, I had clean forgotten, that the book review site actually has made it possible for me to meet and interview interesting people (Peter F. Hamilton [sfbook.com] for one), and some publishers actually send me review copies of books. So maybe I'm not really loosing money on it.

        But I would do it, event if I never recieved a review copy and if I never made a dime from amazon.
      • No, but that's the point. People express themselves creatively because they enjoy it, not because they make money on it. (A corollary of this is that copyright is meant to finance art, not motivate it.)

    • (I may be misunderstanding the term "OpenContent" - but I take it to mean "providing content, without making money on it").

      From the article:

      "I define open content as content possible for others to improve and redistribute and/or content that is produced without any consideration of immediate financial reward -- often collectively within a virtual community."

      I disagree with the second part of the definition. "Free content" describes such material better. By my definition, "open content" is similar in

  • Good article, but missed the negatives!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Serapth ( 643581 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:20AM (#6587748)
    The article was an interesting read, but I think it missed out on a massively important point.

    The one thing that open content lacks ( and also, ironically one of its strengths ) is quality control. Anybody can realistically publish anything or everything they want, of their own creation into the public domain. This is an area that for the most part is lacking in an open content system. There is no editor per-say; there is no proof reader, or anybody that actually audits the validity of the content.

    Of Course, the ability to publish your works into the public demand, effectively for free, is a great advantage. As is the ability to publish that which you wish to say without censorship, and in some cases, without ulterior motive.

    At the same time, thats the problem... with out quality control, the consistancy of the published work or the validity of fact within such work cannot be gauranteed. In the end, of times, one will spend longer sifting through the garbage in order to find a gem... that in the end, it would perhaps have been simplier and some case's cheaper ( time is money ... all that) to just go with atypical close content? At least then, your normally gauranteed a baseline of quality.

    Dont take that the wrong way... im not saying that open content is lesser in quality then closed content... I imagine that just isnt the case. But, there is a reason we hire people to sift through good and bad products to decide what should be published. Allowing any tom, dick or harry to publish whatever works they wish is a wonderful thing, but for every item published... the ability to find the creme of the crop, becomes harder and harder.

    Then there is open content along the lines of news/information. From a closed content provider, their is often a certain legal liability or onus on the publisher to verify the validity of said content. Under an open content system, there is no such thing. For the most part, I read a story in the newspaper... im pretty much sure its mostly based on fact... lawsuits result from less. ( That said, I have no trust of closed media either. ) On the same accord... on the net... I can read stories from basically anyone in the world... now, knowing if I can trust it, if it was real, or just some bogus hoax... that I cant do.

    Thats the difference in a sense between open source software, and open source content. The world of software is by its nature a much smaller subset... their are certain skills you need to possess to both create content ( code/software ), and to use that content. Dont get me wrong, there are loads of crap open source projects out there... but due to the realivly small size of the community, coupled with its technical savvy... the truly good projects tend to rise to the top. However, in the world of open content... ANYBODY can play... there is no baseline skill required to say... write an article ( I didnt say a good one... ;) ). Additionally, to consume any open content, really doesnt require that much skill either... A whole area of checks and balances that exist in the code development world, just doesnt exist here. Coupled with the fact, that you really dont require any particular skill to publish (bad) content, and their is nobody out there to stop you from doing so... very very very quickly start drowning all the good stuff out with the bad.

    Im not against the idea... im just suggesting that as open content becomes more successful, its success itself, will result in more open content being released... quality going down... and difficulty in finding such good content rising. One need just look at the difference between the web now, and say... in 1996... You cant argue that it isnt much more cluttered with crap then its ever been.
    • Basically Open Content and Free Software are sister-movements. Both are battles against the privatisation of knowledge.

      Free Software has existed long before the FSF, but it wasn't called that way. In the same way Open content has always existed, long before we started calling it "Open Content". The most well known is the Gutenberg Project that started in '71. In the some way, the whole internet could be called Open Content.

      Free Software as such was first defined by RMS, in reaction to the problem of propr
    • This is why I don't bother to read unmoderated discussion sites. Also there is no reason critics can't review open content as well as closed, and I will just rely on the opinions of those I trust, or a community I trust. And WRT the responsibility of closed content providers to verify the validity of their content, many seem to have abdicated that responsibility in the last few years, but since they are attacking elected officials they are unlikely to be sued.

  • Open Comment (Score:4, Funny)

    by WPIDalamar ( 122110 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:23AM (#6587768) Homepage

    I am releaseing this comment under an open comment license. You are free to use, modify, copy and distribute it so long as credit is given back to me for the original work.

    • Re:Open Comment (Score:4, Funny)

      by Basis ( 655735 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:35AM (#6587870)
      You have used a word that is Intellectual Property of my company. I refuse to tell you which word, as it is a trade secret. People can continue to use your comment, but are required to purchase a license from me for the low price of 1500 USD.

      Thank you for your support.

  • No hope for open content (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dook43 ( 660162 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:28AM (#6587815)
    Unfortunately, open content is largely a different animal than OSS. While it sounds great, and is surely a great idea, it seems that until artists, musicians, and graphic/software developers don't make a living off of their works, they will never want to give their compositions away for free along with the details of how they were created. Since many OSS programmers are also employed gainfully writing non-OSS software, this is not a problem for them because they don't make a living writing it. Even if they don't, in cases such as Hans Reiser, they can get sponsorships from search engines, DARPA, and the like to add whatever features that a certain party wants added. Here is possibly where open content could work however; for example, I could pay Chris Cornell to write a song about whatever I wanted, and specify in the contract that he had to release information about lyrics, sheet music, and which instruments he used into the public domain. Artists who spend time creating works will never want to release their work into the public domain without compensation. They have to eat too!
  • I'm in my last year of study in a Computer Engineering degree and one thing I can appriciate is Open Hardware projects, like LART. I am starting a project where I was going to design an embedded system but I found the majority of work to be done already thanks to the LART project. This saves me a lot of time and it can let me focus on the more important aspects of the project.

  • long live open content (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Connie_Lingus ( 317691 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:43AM (#6587937) Homepage
    I think the easy answer to this in that "open content" is its own reward...kinda like playing music. The act of creating something carries with it enough personal satisfaction to keep us doing it, without any need for others to comment.

    However, we all should know that plenty of Big Corporate Interests will soon start trying to eliminate "open content" from the table. DRM and legal challenges will soon start working together to eliminate what-they-will-call unregulated content, of course, to protect us from some imaginary threat to our safty/children and/or security, and to control the distribution of products and threatening memes that the internet allow to run unfettered.

    We must all be vigilant to protect this bastion of free speech, for powerful forces are combining to reshape it into there restrictive image....

  • I know that the article wasn't talking merely about open source, but this is slashdot, and everything relates to open source. :) Living in the US, working at a corporation, I can't ever see things like "intrinsic motivation" or "altruism" coming in to play. As great as the user-community around open source is (and i'm constantly amazed at the quality of software that comes out), open source won't gain wide-scale acceptance until major corporations take to it. Like IBM seems to be. Corporations exist for

  • The problem of value. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by panda ( 10044 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:47AM (#6587964) Homepage Journal
    The problem of value is that *most* people are conditioned by society to equate value with money. There are many things in my life that have value to me but I cannot express that value in monetary terms. Most of these "things" (my family, my friends) have a value that far exceeds any quantifiable monetary sum. These are things which I hold so dear that I would not sell them at any price, and I would even give up my life to protect them.

    Free Software that I use and that I have contributed to also has value to me, but I don't generally attempt to quantize that value in monetary. It has a utility value in that it helps me to accomplish tasks, it improves my understanding of software creation, and it even entertains me. So there are many levels of value in otherwise valueless software: utility, entertainment, and intellectual stimulation.

    The same holds for "open content." Most of the www is still available to us at little or no charge, and though much of what may be out there is dross, there is still a great deal of entertainment, utility, and educational value to be found.

    Warren Buffett has been quoted as saying that the Internet is the greatest destroyer of value to ever exist. In the strict monetary sense of value, he is correct. In the less tangible sense of value, as in what I value and what I have to gain of an intellectual and/or utilitarian nature from free and open content and code on the Internet, Mr. Buffett could not be more wrong. The Internet and technologies that can be used have the potential to greatly increase the non-monetary value of any information, and that in my opinion is a good thing.

    It is time that we get beyond money as the sole measuring stick for value.

    • Mod the parent comment up -- it's a great description of the difference between use value and exchange value.

    • I think you've made an excellent point about the distinction between something being valuable to a person or society and something being exchangable for money.

      This distinction is the main issue I see in a transition to an Open Source/Content society. Many things simply cannot be traded for personal or societal value today. The electric company and my ISP, as examples, are not interested in whether I can make them feel better or contribute "entertainment, utility, and educational value." So to create thing

  • The Public Good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @10:02AM (#6588132) Journal
    Why would someone make open content?

    For the same reason some people (not all) write open source software. For the same reason that some people take their personal time to volunteer for the Red Cross or Goodwill. For the same reason that someone participates in a neighborhood watch. For the same reason the Martin Luther posted the 99 Thesis on church doors.

    For the public good. You do it because you think it benefits some sector of the public. Most people can't do it ALL the time, because we like to eat and have homes and be able to buy things occasionaly. But most people have the impulse to volunteer for something worthy from time to time. Most developers do commercial work, copyrighted and proprietary by day, to pay the bills. Some do extra volunteer coding in their spare time, because they want to contribute their skills to the benefit the public at large.

    The value comes from the knowledge that you're doing something worthy and good, and doing it for the right reasons. I could use my time in a variety of ways, including making money. But I know that when I give blood, I may have just saved a life. CPR instructors know that their efforts may helpy MANY people save lives. Volunteers refurbishing a downtrodden playground know they've helped give kids a better place to play.

    Providing open content is no different if you do it for these reasons.
    • I write open source software because it's a superior development methodology for those of us with limited resources. I don't give a flying fuck about children in Nigeria, your public good, or even you, if it really comes right down to it. I don't write it because it makes me "feel good", I don't write it because it's going to make me a million dollars, I don't write it so YOU can get a free ride, I write it because I want to write it and take advantage of the other similarly interested developers who may
    • Altruistic Balderdash! We do it because it's fun, a distinctly selfish sentiment.
  • Just so long as people remember that creating value is not the same thing as creating wealth, I'm all cool with this conversation.

    "Value" is the worth people assign to things, and is how much people are willing to trade for something. Value can be in dollars, time, whatever - basically the value of something is the alternatives forgone for the thing.

    "Wealth" is actually how much stuff there is around. Technically, the only things that increase wealth are manufacturing and agriculture. Everything else just

    • "Wealth" is actually how much stuff there is around. Technically, the only things that increase wealth are manufacturing and agriculture.

      Readers should note that most economists would reject this claim out of hand. If wealth is defined in this way then there is no reason why we should care about wealth, or about how much of it there is. What we should care about is value because "value is the worth people assign to things". In other words when you decide what to do, to make, to buy, or what policy to pers
      • Readers should note that most economists would reject this claim out of hand.

        Interesting, I learned that definition of wealth from an economist. Also, I have to disagree. Both wealth and value are important, where you seem to indicate that my first post indicated that they are exclusive concepts. My apologies if I misled the reader.

        I'd say more, but I'm trying to say something that will elaborate my point rather than just keep reiterating what I already said.

        Anyway, I suggest we go talk to economists an

  • Open source (non TCPA/DMR) Hardware is a way more important discussion.

    Where do you want to play open content with closed hardware?

    Exactly life on stage but nowhere else...

    I wonder why so few people see the light with this...

  • Producing Open Content has its own rewards (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarkWatson ( 189759 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @11:45AM (#6589188) Homepage
    I have written 2 open content (Creative Commons license) web books (with a 3rd available in rough, incomplete form) on Java + AI, and Common LISP programming.

    I get a lot out of writing open content material. The best thing is getting sincere thanks from people who use my work. A secondary benefit is that I think that it helps my consulting business.

    That said, I probably spend only 5% of my "work" time producing free open content - I do have to pay the bills.

    -Mark

  • The most sensible suggestion I have heard about how to reconcile author's rights with the fact of unlimited and essentially free duplication comes from an entrepreneur called Bob Thompson -- of course he may have got the idea elsewhere.

    Anyway, the story is that, for any piece of creative work, a price is fixed. Once pledges are received to that amount, the work is released and may be duplicated gratis. The author gets paid, but has to set a realistic price, the audience get what it wants at a price it i

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