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An Open Kindle? We Dare Ya!

At first it seemed like Amazon had released the source code to the Kindle -- although, as it turns out, they haven't. Not really, anyway. One would think they've got nothing to lose by doing so, since the real value of the Kindle isn't in the device itself anyway.

Back when the Kindle first came out, I speculated it was actually a first stab at creating a subsidized Internet-anywhere tablet. Most of the then-$300+ cost of the thing went to funding the network connection used to deliver material to it. The connection, the content itself, the digital rights management -- those are the things that are being subsidized. The Kindle's only useful because of what you can get delivered to you through it -- the content you actually have to pay for and which is locked up behind various walls of protection, technological and legal.

It might well be possible for Amazon to offer the entire source code for the device, including the DRM modules -- especially since the DRM modules aren't much use without the certificates and the content to go with it. But perhaps they don't see that as being useful to them. I've mentioned in the past that I don't automatically believe that many eyes makes bugs shallow; a single trained eye can do better work in that regard than a thousand laymen.

The Kindle's not likely to be the open reader everyone wants, anyway. What's far likelier is an analogue to what happened in the music industry: someone will begin to offer DRM-free editions of best-sellers (in .PDF, I'm betting), and an open source reader will become available as an adjunct to that. The Kindle does accept .PDF, but not by default -- and there won't be a push to accept it until a major publisher steps up. And I don't see that happening until only after most of the others have started to lose out.

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