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Is All This Web 2.0 Openness A Good Thing?

I went to a news conference this morning and a philosophical debate broke out. The scene was the unveiling of the Nokia N810, a new Internet tablet from the world's No. 1 handset maker, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The Nokia executives were extolling the virtues of openness in the Web 2.0 world, when a German journalist piped up and asked, "But aren't you just making things open for the malcreants also?"

Aside from his charming Teutonic English, the guy had a good question. Once all mobile platforms and devices and applications become based on open-source and open standards, doesn't it make it easier for the black hats -- the "malcreants" of the world -- to pilfer identities, hack into networks, and generally toss spanners in the Web 2.0 works?

Almost immediately, a guy from Blog Nation piped up from the back of the room: "Openness does not equal insecurity."

That's a somewhat nonreassuring generalization. Here's what the Nokia executives in the room had to say:

"There are good guys and bad guys in the real world and in the virtual world," remarked Anssi Vanjoki, head of Nokia's multimedia. "In our architecture and design, we've paid special attention to this matter, to ensure that the platform and the environment are safe for third parties.

"But we believe openness benefits all of us. We allow the good guys to use the power of this openness and this connectivity to fight the ill-willed people."

In reality the argument is moot. To imagine that there's really a choice is a fiction. Without open standards and open platforms, there's no Web 2.0. Even Steve Ballmer has acknowledged that.

"The other direction would be toward closed, proprietary systems," added Ari Virtanen, VP of converged products for Nokia. "You cannot develop the Web 2.0 environment by setting limitations."

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