title: The Open Web - What's at Stake 


h1. The Open Web - What's at Stake
        
(Adapted S9 Version From Original S5 Slide Deck by Brendan Eich, Mozilla @ SXSW 2007)

h1. What Does "Open" Mean?

* Unencumbered, Cross-Platform Standards
* Open Source / Free Software Implementations
* No Single-Vendor "Lock-In"
* User Innovation Network Effects
* Distributed Extensibility

h1. What Is Not "Open"

* Cubic Equation Wars (16th Century Italy)
* Apple iTunes
* Adobe Flash, Adobe Integrated Runtime/AIR (formerly Apollo)
* Microsoft Silverlight (formerly WPF/E - Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere)

h1. "Open" Examples

* The "New English Dictionary" (1857-1884)
* Extreme Sports Gear (Windsurfing, 1978-1998)
* Ajax Libraries (Prototype, Dojo, jQuery, etc.)
* Most of the Public Web, Still (2007)
* The "WHAT Working Group":http://www.whatwg.org

h1. User Innovation Networks
        
* Eric von Hippel, MIT
* User-only innovation networks can flourish when:
## "Lead Users" have incentive to innovate
## Users voluntarily reveal their innovations
## Diffusion of innovations is low cost

h1. Hard Questions

* Will the W3C HTML WG use WHATWG specs?
* Will Microsoft handicap the Web vs. Silverlight?
* Will Adobe open up Flash?
* What's Apple up to?
* Can Mozilla make a difference (again)?

h1. Mozilla's Position
        
* We want to move the Web forward quickly
** Offline Web Apps (Firefox 3)
** 2D and 3D (OpenGL/ES) Canvas tag
** JavaScript 2 / ECMAScript Edition 4
** Better text via CSS3 and beyond
* Working with Opera via WHATWG on @<video>@
** Unencumbered Ogg Theora decoder in all browsers
** Ogg Vorbis for @<audio>@
** Other formats possible
** DHTML player controls
* For all browsers, not just Firefox

h1. The Open Web and Its Adversaries

Follow-up Article: "The Open Web and Its Adversaries":http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2007/03/the_open_web_and_its_adversari.html (March 2007)