Flash and Twitter are open, aren't they?

In the past, we've been given feedback that as an organization supporting open source and open standards we should not use certain technologies. Adobe flash, and Adobe Air have been two notable examples of this. For some, this issue is black or white... if you want to reach people on the web, flash is a big part of doing so. Conversely, those advocating open standards note the risks and damage caused by using technologies encumbered by patents and royalties and thus push strongly for free alternatives. It is thus interesting to see what Adobe has to say on the matter. Read on.

Dave McAllister has blogged about this issue as it pertains to Flash stating that although not open source due to the technologies it supports, particularly video codecs, it is as open as they can make it and open enough to add value upon. Tim O'Reilly has commented on this in the past in the context of Twitter and seemed to agree with McAllister - that a technology open for interaction and extension is as open as you need it to be. A quote from O'Reilly:"...If you close things off, eventually you lose. This is why one of my slogans is 'Create more value than you capture.' As long as people are doing that, I don't care whether they're trying to capture some value."

Matt Asay has commented in this regarding Twitter and disagreed stating that an open standard and open source implementation is needed. In another post, he rightly points out that sometimes companies work hard to avoid lock in themselves, while locking in their customers.

What's the right answer? Perhaps it depends on the case. If there are strong open standards such as http (web), smtp (email), SQL (database), and so forth - then it's a no brain decision to embrace them. In other cases where there is an open standards/open source based alternative but it is relatively weak compared to proprietary defacto standards, what do you do then? Should you staunchly stick to the open alternatives? Should you support and nurture the open alternatives, but be pragmatic and also use the proprietary technologies? This is our current thinking for our Freeseer video capture software and the videos we host in both open and proprietary formats. We would value your feedback if this is the right approach.