Tim O'Reilly on why the Kindle should be an open book

[aureate]

"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.

[Sweetpea]

Unless Amazon embraces open e-book standards like epub, which allow readers to read books on a variety of devices, the Kindle will be gone within two or three years.

I think this sums everything up what he means by open. You shouldn't just be able to read only Amazon stuff on it, but every format you can get. Yes, you can format shift books, but that is not something I can explain to my mother.

[JasonB]

Originally Posted by Sonist

BTW, I am really puzzled why ANYONE would purchase a proprietary DRM-ed book, which will go up in smoke if they change hardware vendors, or the company which sold it went belly up and was not benevolent enough to, or was prevented from, unlocking the files?

I've been buying Sony DRM and haven't yet seen a downside to doing so. Assuming that the company goes under, or they change something, I'm pretty confident that that there will be cracks developed to break the DRM anyway - and nobody would really object to much to it, as there wouldn't be much point. But, that aside, any books I currently own would still be readable on the device that I downloaded them for. (And if I ever upgrade to another device, that can't read what I've already bought, I'm not about to throw out the old device - just in case I do want to re-read something.)

I'm not really sure how, realistically, using DRM is preventing me from doing anything I'd like to do with my eBooks - either now or in the future.

[JasonB]

Originally Posted by tompe

Open source is not the important thing. The important thing is open protocols and open formats. When you have three readers you use in different situations you will not buy a Kindle book that can only be used on the kindle since you want to be able to switch readers and use the net to exchange position information.

I'm not sure I understand this. If you have three different readers, and have certain situations where you use one over the others - why isn't the type of eBook that you're reading one of those "situations" that would determine which reader you would be using? If you buy a Kindle book, that's a situation where you use your Kindle; a Sony book, a situation where you use your Sony. Alternatively, if you're reading a technical manual, I'm sure that you'd want a device with a 9"+ screen - and maybe colour; if you're just reading a novel, you'd want a smaller (6") screen for portability and convenience and wouldn't care about colour. So - if you have multiple readers anyway, I don't see why you have to stick to a format that all of them can read equally.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by JasonB

I'm not sure I understand this. If you have three different readers, and have certain situations where you use one over the others - why isn't the type of eBook that you're reading one of those "situations" that would determine which reader you would be using? If you buy a Kindle book, that's a situation where you use your Kindle; a Sony book, a situation where you use your Sony. Alternatively, if you're reading a technical manual, I'm sure that you'd want a device with a 9"+ screen - and maybe colour; if you're just reading a novel, you'd want a smaller (6") screen for portability and convenience and wouldn't care about colour. So - if you have multiple readers anyway, I don't see why you have to stick to a format that all of them can read equally.

i would say convenience in the first instance would be the answer to your question. Imagine the absolute mess we'd be in with portable audio if MP3 hadn't become the standard (yes I understand it's not open and there are license fees involved). Say you had to have an iPod for one batch of music you bought, a Sony for another, and yet another device to listen to audiobooks...and on and on. As it stands I can, with very little hesitation, buy any portable audio player and be guaranteed that my DRM-free MP3 music collection will play on that player. We should be heading toward that same situation for ereaders.

Your argument about PDF for technical reasons would be the same as me buying a COWON audio player over an iPod beccause the COWON provides FLAC and OGG playback. Yes, there should be ereaders that provide colour, PDF reading and a bigger screen for those who need that funcionality, but these devices, just like the COWON's playback of MP3, should have a default, universal format that are accepted on every reader (ePub of course)

ePub is the sanctioned standard, the only reason we're not seeing major adoption is the short-sightedness of certain companies who want to keep the market restricted to their own formats and reader. They have the football and they've taken it home

[JasonB]

I guess I don't get why somebody would have 3 different readers in the first place. But, assuming that they did, I don't get why they would have to have a format that worked with all of them.

That aside, on a personal level, I don't have a need to go beyond the single LRX proprietary format I have, or the other open formats that I can also access (but which haven't used yet). So far, I haven't hit a lack of reading material - nor do I really expect to.

As for music - in my own case, I've never bought an electronic version. I've always ripped from the physical CDs I own. But, even if I did buy electronically, I doubt I'd be feeling a dearth of choice were I forced to a particular standard.

My reader will read ePub. So maybe this is a non-issue.

I was just trying to sort out the whole "3 readers" thing - why anybody would have 3 readers in the first place and, if they did, why it would be so bad if 1 (or even 2) of them couldn't read a particular book format - when at least one of them could so you'd still be okay. You're saying that you don't want different formats to force you to have 3 readers. That makes sense. I wouldn't like that either. But tompe posted that he already has (or the generic you already has) 3 readers (one of them a Kindle I presume). In that scenario, you aren't forced to get another one. You already have one that can read Kindle books. So I don't see the problem.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by JasonB

I was just trying to sort out the whole "3 readers" thing - why anybody would have 3 readers in the first place and, if they did, why it would be so bad if 1 (or even 2) of them couldn't read a particular book format - when at least one of them could so you'd still be okay. You're saying that you don't want different formats to force you to have 3 readers. That makes sense. I wouldn't like that either. But tompe posted that he already has (or the generic you already has) 3 readers (one of them a Kindle I presume). In that scenario, you aren't forced to get another one. You already have one that can read Kindle books. So I don't see the problem.

Presumably, you'd have multiple readers (in a perfect world) because each reader had a different aspect which was valuable to you at different times... for an example, a large dedicated reader for relaxed reading, and a more portable PDA for reading while commuting.

The problem comes in when one type of reading you do... say, magazines or newspapers... aren't available in the format that fits the device you use when you want to read them... say, the commute-tolerant PDA. Or maybe it's colored textbook material, which would be better suited for a large screen, but not a large grayscale screen.

Of course, this isn't a perfect world, so the other issue is format. Sure, Tompe may have a Kindle... but what if he wants to read his book on the train, and he uses a smartphone to do that? He can't read his Amazon books.

And suppose I use a Kindle for commuter reading... but Amazon doesn't produce the e-book I want? Amazon doesn't sell everything yet...

So I can understand the desire for multiple devices, in a perfect and an imperfect world. I think about it regularly, although I haven't used more than a PDA at any time (it reads most formats). When I can port Amazon books into it, I won't need a Kindle, ever. On the other hand, if it ever becomes a color Kindle capable of allowing me to upload magazines to it, that would be enough of a reason for me to get one.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

. . . however european publishers who are starting to publish digitally now are almost all opting for the epub format, sometimes exclusively; . . . i really hope amazon decides to add support for epub to the kindle;. . .

If you sign up with Amazon to have it sell your books for the Kindle, Amazon offers to convert your ePub format files to .azw format and wrap it in Kindle DRM. Amazon recognizes the importance of ePub but prefers to convert it to its own format.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Presumably, you'd have multiple readers (in a perfect world) because each reader had a different aspect which was valuable to you at different times... for an example, a large dedicated reader for relaxed reading, and a more portable PDA for reading while commuting.

Exactly, I have now a Cybook, a N810 and a phone which I can read books on. I prefer not to bring the Cybook when I go to a pub for example but I would like to continue to read the current book without much trouble on the bus to the pub or when waiting for other people. So if we have a standardized open format and a standardized open method to synchronize pages that would be possible.

This is just one example. When you have open and standardized formats new ways to do things will appear and the creative process will be stimulated.