O’Reilly: “Google Maps is the new open source.”

At the SD Forum in Santa Clara, California Mr. O’Reilly, Sun Microsystems’ Simon Phipps and IBM’s Rod Smith participated in a panel on open source. First off, the three apparently refused to narrow the definition of open source (The Register), giving a sort of “it means whatever you think it means.” For example, anyone who uses Apache, they argued, is part of the open source community. That of course would include Microsoft which is oft reported to use open source technology in dribs and drabs in its empire. (Now, who would want to be part of a club that included Microsoft? Groucho would have a field day!)

More relevant to the geospatial world was the O’Reilly’s statement, “Google Maps is the new open source,” which followed the suggestion that Google is a great example of an open source company because it uses vast Linux server farms to build and deliver software services to customers. The writer at the Register felt O’Reilly was referring to Google’s “more open” interface allowing more users to create mashups than on Yahoo’s or Microsoft’s platforms.

If publishing an interface is all it takes to be open source than I’ll offer that Mr. O’Reilly did indeed redefine open source, or at least the “new open source.”