| | JUNE 202119CIOReview"Open Sources 2.0" released 2005, five years after the original "Open Sources". In 2000, the open source revolution faced an uncertain outcome. By 2005, open source triumphed; the question was not if major technology companies should use open source, but rather how. At the same time, open source entered discussions about more than just copyright and source code. 15 years later, progress has been slow in these new areas, yet the urgency is greater than ever. We must take the innovation dynamics of open source beyond software.Look at four areas in need of intellectual property innovation: open content, open data, open APIs, and open patents. In each, proprietary lock-in and regulatory capture hold back innovation that would benefit all commercial endeavors, including those of the current proprietary winners.OPEN CONTENTMajor open content projects, like Wikipedia, have emerged in the last 15 years. Yet the media business has become ever more locked down. Works from 1924 on will not begin to enter public domain until 2024, assuming copyright term is not extended yet again. Unencrypted formats like MP3 are harder to find; open source formats like FLAC and Ogg Vorbis are largely unsupported commercially. Streaming companies mediate content distribution in a way that makes consumer ownership of content ever more difficult. Ironically the power of open content to drive innovation is prominent in the history of the media business. For decades after bluesman Robert Johnson's death, his works were believed to be in the public domain. While Johnson was a rare talent, the perception that his works were freely available made it easy for everyone from Eric Clapton to the Rolling Stones to cover, modify, and extend his music. The result is an entire genre of blues rock that might not otherwise exist.OPEN DATAIn the last 15 years the cost of compute has dropped dramatically. Consequently big data, AI, and machine learning have thrived, and the business value of data has grown. Data unlocks innovation potential in fundamentally new ways, from autonomous vehicles to voice recognition. While privacy is a vital consideration, procedures for anonymizing subjects in experimentation have been part of science since before computers. The problem isn't sharing too much; it's not sharing enough.Our abundance of data has pushed tech in the direction of more proprietary data. Selling data sets is now big business. Yet putting a price on data adds a cost to innovation, thus slowing the pace of innovation. Better data governance around appropriate open data would help.OPEN APISSince 2005 we've shifted away from "shrink-wrapped" software to software as a service. This, in turn, has ushered By Mark Stone, Director of Technical Project Management at EtsyBEYOND SOFTWAREMark StoneCXO INSIGHTS
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