Openness is a set of values by which you live. It is not a prefix for a sector – open access, open source, open data, open government. Nor is it a license. Openness is not contingent on what license you use.
Rather open is a personal position and it transcends both sectors and licenses.
Living in the open way can be a very painful process. It is a lifelong journey which is largely made up of understanding how the proprietary way of life has shaped you and how it is deeply, deeply, embedded in the way you act and think. Openness is the undoing of that. The process of peeling off layer upon layer the proprietary way of life. Openness is a way of life, or perhaps a way of growing, an often painful path where we challenge our own value system against itself. A path where we deliberately create internal disharmony as we allow open and proprietary values to fight for a place within ourselves. A path where we learn to first cognate this process, witness it, resolve it, behave it. It’s a practiced art of going the other way. Step by step. Towards a more open way of being.
