Open Software – from watches to newspapers

One of the most interesting trends of recent years has been the way that increasing openness has been embraced by a growing number of proprietary business who realise that they probably can’t come up with all the great ideas for a product.

For example, the wristwatch has been coming under attack from the fact so many people use their mobile phone for checking the time (and a lot more). And past ideas to include digital information in a watch have generally been a bit, well, rubbish, as they’ve tended to look like a reject from the 1980s vision of the future.

But Fossil seem to have a cool idea, as reported by ReadWriteWeb. Make something that looks really good, allow the type of notifications which are short, actionable and time-sensitive. And then open-source it to developers to come up with amazing ideas for what could be displayed there, rather than trying to think of them all.

Meanwhile, the Journal Register company has been experimenting with producing online and print editions of their newspapers using only free tools. Dubbed the Ben Franklin project, it’s involved using a variety of tools – for instance, WordPress as a publishing platform, or GIMP for image editing.

And they’re honest about the fact that this experiment is about finding the best ways to publish print and digital products for the future, using more cost-effective ways to exist in a challenging market. Their blog about the experience is well worth reading, and already alerted me to an interesting open source Desktop Publishing System called Scribus which I haven’t had the good fortune to try yet. (H/T Tim Windsor)

Free and open isn’t the only solution you should look at – there are sometimes very good reasons for going the proprietary route. And open comes with certain commitments it could be easy for companies to overlook (Such as the commitment to contribute back to the codebase – easy to forget if it comes after all your business-critical tasks). But with those caveats in place, proprietary software now has to work so much harder to earn its keep.