[wos] post-openness

[Erik Moeller]

Janko - 

I think I see potential for an interesting panel here. Appropriation of
proprietary platforms by user subcultures vs. free platforms. 

My own position is that in proprietary platforms, the users will only
win the small battles, while losing the large ones without even
realizing it. For instance, the marketing profiles you can gather on
platforms like MySpace are pretty amazing. The lack of a free license
removes one essential freedom: the freedom to fork. This is exactly what
keeps Wikimedia honest, not to mention that it gurantees the long term
survival of the content.

Perhaps of interest in this context is a little project of mine to
select the best Creative Commons (CC-BY or CC-BY-SA) material from
Flickr and upload it to Wikimedia Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr

So far we've reviewed over 50,000 images and uploaded nearly 5,000 to
Wikimedia. In a way, we're forking a subset of Flickr (sans most of the
cat photos) -- and keeping Flickr honest in the process.

WOS shouldn't just attract a big crowd, it should also enlighten. Of
course the two are not mutually exclusive if you can come up with panels
and topics that have broad appeal without neglecting your responsibiliy
to inform. But, who would be good speakers on a panel like this? Stewart
Butterfield from Flickr should certainly be on the list of invitees.

Erik