Joe Kraus from Jotspot: There's been a lot of hype around open source, and there are people who believe that open web means open source and anything less than open source is not open web. I don't believe this. Open source is a really important movement—it's powerful in many ways, and we certainly benefit from it and contribute to it—but there are also a lot of interesting examples of late that take a different view of open web. These examples point to open data, not open source.

Take Flickr: Its code is closed, but there are enough APIs in and out of it that you have this tremendous ability to tinker, even if you don't control it. JotSpot, too, is very much an open-data-style service. Just as with Flickr, there are tons of APIs in and out. You can manipulate content inside of JotSpot even if you don't have source-code control.

To me, open web really refers to how tinkerable it is. It's really a spectrum of tinkerability. Some people believe the only way you can tinker is via open source, but I believe the new trend (especially in web-based services that are hosted by somebody else) is to facilitate tinkerability even without open source. That's why I think Google is not actually totally closed: They offer APIs into their service. Now, they could offer more ...

And is the shift due to the shortage of big open source thinkers?

Anyway if you have ideas to make KAYWA weblogs more tinkerable, let me know.