Symbian has announced just a couple of months ago that they are going ‘open source’. Google proudly states that the Chrome and Android operating systems are also open source. Adobe and Apple had a public row about what open standards truly are.

In this day and age, there is plenty of fuss and debate about what is open and what is not. While it seems to be an issue that heavily affects developers and manufacturers, should end users be concerned?

In technology, there is plenty of ways to determine what is open, and some might even argue that it is all a matter of perspective. Take Apple for instance; their stance regarding Flash and HTML5 includes the argument that HTML5 is an open platform that everyone can use, while Flash is solely developed by Adobe and hence not ‘open’. At the same time, Adobe argues that though Apple uses an open platform, they (Apple) are not open when it comes to giving both the developers and users control.

As much as this may seem like a moral issue in some instances, there is more to the “open” concept than just what is right or wrong. After all, despite the many complaints and criticisms that Apple has faced for being a closed company, this has also given rise to one of their biggest advantages: by not being open, they are able to dictate specifically what goes on in the iPhone or in any of their other products, and through this, they are able to create a standard or a uniformity in a user’s experience.

Open also has its advantages as well, on open source platforms, developers get to play around more as they have access to more resources, functions and even hardware features. In the end, it is unlikely that end users would even be able to make a purchasing decision based on whether a product uses open standards or not. What will matter is how good the products are.

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