Google on openness

Google Blog: The meaning of ‘open’

To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win. …  The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors. There are different tactical approaches — razor companies make the razor cheap and the blades expensive, …, a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in …tends towards being incremental at best… because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don’t have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won’t.

…which leaves the question open, what “open” means.

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