Conceiving Open Systems

Abstract

Openness is an unruly concept. While free tends toward ambiguity (free as in speech, or free as in beer?), open tends toward obfuscation. Everyone claims to be open, everyone has something to share, everyone agrees that being open is the obvious thing to do-after all, but for all its nt of Free Software. It is never quite clear whether being open is a means or an end. Worse, the opposite of open in this case