Authority and Freedom: OpenSource

The relationship between authority (or structure) and freedom is a theme I’m sure to return to frequently.

Today I received an email from a colleague about The WebM Project . The launch of this project was supported by Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, Google and many other publishers, software and hardware vendors. No Apple? Quelle surprise.

Freedom
“WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web.”
Authority/Structure
“WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats.”

And there is http://www.opensource.org/

Freedom
“The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.”
Authority/Structure
“One of our most important activities is as a standards body, maintaining the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.”

Overall I think these are great initiatives. The point I want to make here is simply that the very freedom and openness being sought by these communities are enabled by maintaining authority and control.

Tis a paradoxical fish, to be sure.