It’s good to support open standards that theoretically lots of people are working on, whether they are “official” (what does that mean?) standards or not. RSS is one example (sort of a standard but not really, but, hey, it works, right?). SXIP was attempting to go through the IETF with DIX, although it now looks like that will not go through.

As I mention in Lloyd’s linked post, I believe SXIP and OpenID are the two leading efforts in this area, and they are also moving to converging together. Both efforts have agreed upon specs and central reference points, as well as several sample implementations. Good enough for me as far as a “standard” goes.

Aside: The IETF and W3C are two bodies that are probably most relevant when discussing Internet standards. The SAML spec, which is also part of identity, is governed by OASIS.

It does seem that the specs have historically been moving targets.

I know little about the area, but if Sxip and OpenID are good for my friend Boris Mann, it is very likely good for me.

I’m curious, which standards body has certified either of those? ISO, IEEE, or?

10 – I would probably currently consider it “shared source”, as your code is incompatible with open source code and I would have concern with “taint” if I used any of your code.

I look forward to seeing how the term and environment of “open social networking” evolves with your commitment to openness, and to using PeopleAggregator.

1. It’s called open social networking because we’re making it possible to inter-connect social networks together and we’re supporting open standards like OpenID and Sxip. We’re also going to be (not quite yet) importing and exporting end-users data between social networks and we’re proposing a whole raft of NEW open standards to inter-connect social networks together. That’s called open social networking. Since no one has ever done this before – we get to invent terms. If you have another term for this – let me know and we can debate that.

2. It is OK to use the term Open right. I mean Tim O’Reilly hasn’t trademarked that – yet – right?

3. This argument that “if I like others OSing, I have to do it myself” is like saying “if I like chocolate than all I can eat if chocolate”. I can like chocolate, but produce vanilla – right? Or I can even be in the Yogurt business and still lice chocolate? Where does it say “if you like chcolate, you can only eat chcolate?” There really is a difference between what other people do – and what you do yourself. And I’m sorry – hiding behind anonymity and complaining about me NOT doing something – is just – well you’re just being a trouble maker. But obviously it’s working, cause I’m sitting here defending myself, instead of working on fixing bugs and improving our software.

4. Oh – BTW we’ve done open source projects before. That’s called StyructuredBlogging.org. Check it out. We make nothing off of it. And we also did ourmedia.org to. Total revenues = ZERO – Total costs $50,000 So I don;t have defend myself to – oooops there I go again – defending myself.

5. I had several conversations with open source zealots who INSISTED that open source means “you can never charge”. Whether that’s legally true or morally true – what I DON’T wanna get involved in, care about or quite frankly care about – is whether or not our license is “officially open source”. And why would anyone care about that – anyway? We have made it clear what the deal is for our software, I think it’s a fair and equitable deal and that’s that. If you don’t like our terms – than find another ‘open source’ social network or spend the $1M yourself and do it yourself (hopefully better than we have!)

6. Now if you caught me lying, fooling people or saying one thing and doing something else – that’s one thing. But I challenge you to find anything I’ve done or said – to be untrue. The nearset I can get from Mr. Anon – over at my blog – is that he’s complaining that I like and respect people for going “open source”, while not swallowing the pill myself. I find that argument and source of complaining to be absurd. I can pick up on that later. But for now – lets’ leave it at this: “if open source means one thing, and that’s not what we’re offering, then we CERTAINLY are not gonna call what we’re offering open source!” Right? Or am I insane?

7. Now back to the issue of: “is what we’re doing confusing people”. I have a measly 25 years in the business under my belt (which is under my chubby tummy.) As many times as I’ve been explained the MySQL dual license – I just don’t get it. I’ve asked lawyers about it, open source nerds, and I get different answers. I’ve asked Marten Mikos of MySQL about it and he says different things to different people. Dudes – where I come from – that’s called confusing. I’m calling that disingenuous as well. You can chose to accept that criticism or not, but it’s my opnion and I have the right to have my own oinion. I think it’s possible to be clearer. If MySQL is GPL – coolio. But how can you be GPL and commercial license at the same time – with the same code? I just don’t get it.

8. Not sure if you know Lloyd – but we also have a consulting company. And we consult large companies on whether they should USE open source code. I encourage them, while at the same time warn them of the trappings and things that could happen. So what often happens is we conclude “well OUR VERSION of open source is X, Y or Z”. In other words – many people and companies come up with their own defintion – to suit their own needs. I really don’t think its fair to say that there’s ONE definition of open source in the market today. But that said – I went to the OSI site and read their official definition of it – and that’s what caused me to want to create our OWN license – which is NOT open source. That way no one would ever complain about us calling ourselves open souce and we’re not.

9. So what happens? Someone complains about me LIKING someone ELSE going open source. Lordy lordy you just can’t win. What am I supposed to do – HATE open source – just cause we have our own license. That’s absurd – too!

10. Does that mean we don’t want folks to have our source = NO! We give away our source – and if you’re NOT a commercial vendor – you can use that code – FOR FREE – FORVER! What’s that called?

11. The ONLY people we ask money from – are people who will commercially exploit our code. Period. And we have liberal and extremely reasonable terms for these folks. (Like it’s aone time fee, free updates for life.)

12. Min. $2,500 – max. $20,000 (and that’s only if you have over 500,000 people in your network – and you’re MAKING MONEY OFF OF THJOSE PEOPLE. What’s called?

13. We call it the “PayAsYouGo” license. Which (BTW) will be available under a Creative Commons lciense – for free – at PayAsYouGo.org. Once we’ve finished with it.

14. And to clarify what Chriss says – up to 100 has nothign to with our source code license. That has to do with our hosted versions of our code – which will be runnong on our servers with US paying the bandwidth bills. The source code is FREE to anyone who isn’t one of those (I’ll say it nicer now) members of teh capitalist elite.