MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Tim O'Reilly on why the Kindle should be an open book

aureate · 02-25-2009, 05:55 AM

"Closed" in this case seems to mean that the books that you buy from amazon for the kindle can't be used by other devices. Is that right? If that's the biggest issue, who's to say that Amazon is unwilling to license that ability? No, it wouldn't be free. But it would be "open-ish".

I'm sure that to get prices down and get publishers on board some concessions had to be made. And as with most things it's easiest to have one rule for everyone rather than a separate rule for every publisher. The publishers are on board with the way things work on the Kindle. They may not be okay with it on other devices.

This is all speculation of course, but open vs closed I don't think is the issue in this argument. They have the market, i.e. people buying the kindle so fast that they can't keep it in stock. They have a virtually unlimited supply of books. They aren't going to fail simply because other devices can't read the format. This isn't an MSN situation.

I would relate it more to Macs in that you are getting the whole streamlined package. That's what you are paying for. Same with the Kindle. You could do the similar thing, and if you cut some feature it may even be cheaper. But it wouldn't be the same experience. I can read e-books on my DS with some homebrew software. I read e-books on a palm pilot back in '99-00. I can say that for an experience that is as good as they are claiming, they have nothing to worry about.

02-25-2009, 05:55 AM	#31
aureate Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: none	I guess I'm confused "Closed" in this case seems to mean that the books that you buy from amazon for the kindle can't be used by other devices. Is that right? If that's the biggest issue, who's to say that Amazon is unwilling to license that ability? No, it wouldn't be free. But it would be "open-ish". I'm sure that to get prices down and get publishers on board some concessions had to be made. And as with most things it's easiest to have one rule for everyone rather than a separate rule for every publisher. The publishers are on board with the way things work on the Kindle. They may not be okay with it on other devices. This is all speculation of course, but open vs closed I don't think is the issue in this argument. They have the market, i.e. people buying the kindle so fast that they can't keep it in stock. They have a virtually unlimited supply of books. They aren't going to fail simply because other devices can't read the format. This isn't an MSN situation. I would relate it more to Macs in that you are getting the whole streamlined package. That's what you are paying for. Same with the Kindle. You could do the similar thing, and if you cut some feature it may even be cheaper. But it wouldn't be the same experience. I can read e-books on my DS with some homebrew software. I read e-books on a palm pilot back in '99-00. I can say that for an experience that is as good as they are claiming, they have nothing to worry about.