What’s the opposite of locked-in? Locked-open. Mwhahaa.
If only locked-open were easier for things that aren’t software. Like standards. And concepts.
If you’re developing software (like Mastodon), locked-open can be enforced by e.g. AGPL. You can change it, but you’re likely to have to share-alike.
If you’re developing standards (like RSS), locked-open can only be enforced by interoperability. If somebody wants to make a breaking change, they can… if they can make it popular enough.
If you’re developing concepts (like podcasting), locked-open becomes a matter of principles. You and I might know that a “platform-exclusive” podcast is outside of the spirit of the standard because it’s not distributed by an RSS feed to which anybody can subscribe.
But for these more abstract ideas, “locked-open” enforcement becomes a matter for education, optimism, and hearts-and-minds. And there are companies with huge resources that are willing to fight against all of those.
dan nice to hear from you!
podcast is locked-open because somehow the users got the idea that they’re entitled to use whatever client they want, and thus it has remained open for 20+ years. all the apps support subscription input and output.
blogging has evolved into a set of silos that dont interop for crazy reasons. and the users don’t have the clues that podcast users do, even though they’re often the same people! ;-)