isen.blog

There's a new initiative to counteract NGN, IMS, IPsphere and other industry initiatives that would regularize, complexify and lock down the Internet. It is called Digistan. It is designed to promulgate Free and Open Standards, which are defined by a key property . . . "that a free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time."

Digistan's Web site starts with a critical insight into standards and markets:

Without open standards, we get fragmented markets in which vendors do not truly compete, customers do not have free choice, and large parts of our technology stacks are proprietary and closed. Lock-in, not competition, becomes the main strategy from established vendors. New small vendors with innovative solutions and advanced technology are prevented from competing. This creates niche markets which may be individually large but are overall insignificant compared to the potential market size.

The Digistan Web site is chock full of wisdom about vendor lock-in and the virtues of openness. In places, it sounds like it is taken from the pages of The Cluetrain Manifesto, e.g.,

. . . almost forty years ago, Steve Crocker and his team wrote RFC001 and launched the networks that built the Internet using a different model based on older human values of sharing and cooperation. His vision, and that of other Internet pioneers, was of a digital world built on simple, interoperable standards, accessible at zero cost to even the smallest teams. Largely, their dream is coming true. Today we're used to an Internet of open software, open content, and open development.

While most agree, not everyone likes it . . . many of the old industrial businesses, instead of adapting, are fighting back. The fight is intensifying because the stakes are growing. Free and open source software, open content, and open communities are together worth trillions of dollars. The key to controlling these rich ecosystems is to control the digital standards they depend on. [link to source page]

I'm the 354th person to sign the Digistan declaration, which explicitly links open standards to human rights. You can sign it too . . . there are five days before the declaration's official May 21 launch!

Check it out. If we don't work for the Internet we want, we'll have to live with the broadband lockbox that's designed for our "Customer Experience."

Thanks to Michael Shiloh, the "community interface" of the OpenMoko project for bringing Digistan to my attention. Excellent interview with Michael here.

Technorati Tags: CluetrainManifesto, Digistan, DisruptiveTechnology, Markets, NetworkNeutrality, OpenAccess, OpenMoko, OpenSource, Standards, Stupid Network, Usability, WealthofNetworks