Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 10:57AM I wanted to share with you a great presentation on the Open Web created by Lachlan Hardy from Sydney, NSW, Australia. Lachlan is a Design Engineer on the Integration Team at Atlassian and is passionate about Web Standards and the Open Web.
Check it out ….
Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 11:08AM Recently there has been a lot of discussion about both the Open Internet and the Open Web and I thought I would try and bring them both together, identify the common goals and identify the differences. I wanted to start with the Internet and the Web itself. We all have an understand as to what they are but this might help to identify the relationship that one has to the other. Here are the Wikipedia definitions of both…
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite(TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies.
The Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents contained on the Internet .
So, as Wikipedia points out, the Internet is a set of connected computer networks and the Web is the hypertext documents that sit on the Internet. They are not synonymous with each other as we would not have the Web without the Internet. But the Web has evolved from more than a series of interlinked hypertext documents to an interactive set of applications, tools, servers and protocols that deliver all kinds of content on the Internet. The Internet is the backbone and the Web is the top layer that we interact with.
What they have in common is the openness that enabled both the internet and the web to evolve. No one told Vint Cerf that he could not bind TCP and IP together and use it on the Internet of the time, he did and TCP/IP became the network standard that powers the Open Internet. Likewise, no one restricted Tim Berners-Lee from adapting the hypertext of the day to run on the Internet, he did and the web has evolved from there. Both the Internet and the Web started as Open Entities, however as the Web has matured, commercialization and market control have restricted that openness and created a norm of restricted inclusion for goods and services on the web. But this is changing as there are multiple groups advocating for Openness on both the Internet and the Web.
Groups Advocating for Openness on the Internet and the Web:
OpenInternet.gov – was setup by the FCC to start a discussion about net neutrality, openness and transparency when it comes to the tools and standards used on the internet or for use by the network operators. This is not your fathers FCC or regulatory council, they are holding open meetings and workshops and have all the tools in place to participate and listen to the difference of opinions on Net Neutrality, and the Open Internet.
OpenWeb Foundation – is a community of advocates, developers, architects and standards maintainers working on open standards and specifications. They have introduced the Open Web Foundation Agreement which is a lightweight framework to help communities and development teams deal with the legal requirements necessary to move their products and standards forward in an open manner.
Open Web Advocacy – is a Google Group for web developer and open standards maintainers to collaborate on open projects, standards and the code necessary to make them happen.
mozilla Drumbeat – is a mozilla project that focuses on building a community of people who advocate for and create tools to help others participate in the open web. Their long term vision is to make sure that the internet is still open, participatory decentralized and public 100 years from now.
How can you help ?
We do not want to leave the decisions of net neutrality to the Politicians. Become informed and get involved. OpenInternet.gov is a great site with many resources to help you understand the issues and tools that enable you to ask questions and share your opinions.
From an Open Web perspective, it is hard work identifying and refining open standards and then building and delivering prototypes that work with these standards. We need more people to help with everything from legal assistance, advocacy, wiki support, development, standards and specification editors. We also need more involvement from Enterprise companies and large scale Institutions allocate resources to further these causes.
Openness fuels innovation and innovation leads to progress. Support these open initiatives and please get involved and help if you can.
