The Meaning of Open

There are a lot of misconceptions about what open means, when it is the right strategy to apply, and the fundamental tradeoffs that go…

The Open Organization Definition

Openness is becoming increasingly central to the ways groups and teams of all sizes are working together to achieve shared goals. And today, the most forward-thinking organizations—whatever their missions—are embracing openness as a necessary orientation toward success. They've seen that openness can lead to:

The Paradox of Open

Numerous organisations and initiatives have been launched with a belief in openness and free knowledge. Their proponents placed their bets on the combined power of networked information services and new governance models for the production and sharing of content and data. We – as members of this broad movement – were among those who believed it possible to leverage this combination of power and opportunity to build a more democratic society, unleashing the power of the internet to create universal access to knowledge and culture. For us, such openness meant not only freedom, but also presented a path to justice and equality.

Thinking about other industries like we think about data centers shows how impoverished the debate is

Clumsy, arbitrary environmental ideas ignore the incredible complexity of the systems modern society depends on

Scale deep — The Systems Sanctuary

The world calls us to shift our mindsets and values from outdated ways of being and doing rooted in dominance, hierarchy and harmful systems, towards new ways rooted in relationship, collaboration and innovation.

The Politics of Open Infrastructures: Power, Governance, and Justice in Digital Knowledge Practices

This volume examines how openness is designed, governed, contested and lived in contemporary digital knowledge infrastructures. From open source software and internet standards, to citizen science platforms, public sector data systems and alternative computing practices, the book shows that infrastructures are never neutral technical backbones.

The work at hand

I work on problems with networks because I am an ordinary person and I care about ordinary people. Sometimes caring about ordinary people means finding new ropes to pull on and throwing your weight into it. For those of us inside the US but outside the VIP lounge of American

The Limits of Knowing Other Minds

New care workers in Britain typically struggle to understand, on their initial encounters, people who communicate atypically due to their intellectual disabilities. But they are required to provide care that is attuned to these individuals’ desires and intentions. Why, then, does a care organization called L'Arche UK make it harder for carers to learn what is going on inside these people's minds? I argue that doing so does not prevent the acquisition of essential knowledge, but rather trains new carers to relate to those with intellectual disabilities as opaque. This creates a more involved relationship that opens up the possibility of forms of status and intimacy otherwise closed to such people—thereby raising questions about the supposedly fundamental role that transparency and knowledge play in knowing others.

Sustainable Open Source: The Maintainers Perspective or: How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Open Source

Aaron Boodman on Twitter / X

There is this tension in dev tooling right now: Lots of people want to self-host, and not depend on a service. Lots of people also want the vibes of open source - being part of an open development community, having the code, etc.But builders still need to make a living...— Aaron Boodman (@aboodman) January 23, 2024