Openness, in the context of peer production, governance and property, refers generally to the availibility of the raw material for the social cooperation to occur. If such material is indeed "open", then it means that individuals and communities are "free" to use and modify it.

The open/free paradigm is part of the three processes that are necessary for the social reproduction of peer to peer processes, see the Circulation of the Common. We have attempted a defintion of a Open Movement which links those three aspects: open/free, participatory, and Commons oriented.

Definition

From the Open Everything project at http://openeverything.wik.is :

"The essence of open (what makes something 'open'?)

In the world of software, we have concrete definitions of what makes something free or open. However, as we use these concepts more widely, it gets fuzzier. One of the things we want to map through Open Everything is the ways that people are using 'open'. List your ideas on the essence of open below by filling in the blanks on the following sentences:

Something qualifies as 'open' when it is ...

1. Transparent. Meaning that you can see inside it, study it or understand it. E.g. open source software or an open government (not that we have great examples on this second one :)).

2. Participatory. People can become involved in a substantive way. They can contribute to and shape the open thing in question. Eg. wikipedia or Jane's Walk.

3. Flexible, malleable, editable. The people involved can change, evolve or improve whatever it is they are gathered around. E.g. an open space meeting agenda.

Some other things I notice about 'open' projects and orgs is that they ...

1. Tend to combine extreme levels of idealism and practicality, which are things that don't usually go hand in hand. E.g. Firefox is a very useful tool, but its makers say they make this tool 'to keep the web open'.

2. Taken from some work in the social innovation/enterprise area, this seem to have some relevance:

1. Provide spaces for people as they are and as they want to become
2. Embrace the richness and wisdom in differences
3. Act with a light spirit, sense of fun, creativity and a perspective of opportunity
4. Practical and productive application of techniques and approaches from non-traditional domains
5. Distribute increasing control, earnings, and assets into the communities they serve

We will refine this list at our events, and then share it with the world to evolve further." (http://openeverything.wik.is/Mapping_Open)

List of Formal Open Definitions

Mark Surman discusses openness here at http://commonspace.typepad.com/commonspace/2008/02/open-vs-open-vs.html and has added a chart at http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfpvr6w7_11g98b73dh

The Open Standards Definition. By Bruce Perens.
Open Standards Requirement for Software
Open Knowledge Definition
The Open Software Service Definition, i.e. The Free/Open Service Definition (v1.0)
Open Source Media Definition
Open Source Definition

Free Definitions

List of Open Concepts and Practices

Open

Open Source

Free

Discussion

Opennness in Telecommunications

Vint Cerf:

"I would start with a principle of non-discrimination in the sense that the operator of the network does not discriminate among parties using the network. They should get what they pay for, and each party should pay in accordance with the bitrates they subscribe to. This does not mean that the operator cannot "manage" the network - if the system congests, it is understood that access will have to be moderated but this needs to be done pro rata with regard to purchased entitlement to access. Oversubscription is one of the reasons that consumer access networks are sometimes (often?) congested and this gets to another openness principle: subscribers should know exactly what they are paying for. This is also sometimes called transparency.

Another open principle is that devices that are compatible with the network should be permitted, whether they are provided by the operator or by other parties. The devices themselves should be "free" to use any application. The operator should not discriminate for or against any particular application or any particular party (consumer, application provider, etc). This principle is akin to common carriage notions.

Operators that offer value added service besides basic packet carriage should not be permitted to discriminate against third parties who offer competing application services. That may even dictate separation of businesses so that there is no cross subsidy between the basic carriage business and the application business that would effectively create an unfair competition between the application providers." (from a discussion with Gordon Cook, September 2008)

Map of Openness

Proposed structure of entries, from the Map of Openness

Information structure

Basic idea could be to have lowest common demoninator of metadata + more specific metadata.

   * Organisation (research about what kinds of fields are common?)
         o type (is there a standard taxonomy for this?)
         o area of work (initially unstructured text/tags?)
         o date started
         o number of people
         o link to projects
         o link to persons
         o income
         o mission statement
         o url
         o blog/news feed url?
         o mailing list url
         o contact details 
   * Project
         o link to organisations
         o link to persons
         o funding/income
         o url
         o mailing list url
         o contact details
         o project description
         o tags 
   * Person
         o link to organisations
         o link to projects
         o link to other

More Information

See the defintion of Open Knowledge, at http://www.opendefinition.org/1.0
And also: Free Software Principles, and the Free Content Definition

Openness

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