A look at the ways in which openness of all kinds can benefit businesses.

5. video tapes to DVDs

6. books to ebooks

8. digital has been with us *longer* - since the beginning of life

11. C -> 01

12. G -> 10

15. only digital information can be repeatedly copied faithfully

17. humans only got there about 70 years ago

18. specifically, Alan Turing got there about 70 years ago with his description of a Turing machine

20. they can run any software written for any computer

22. digital's 0s and 1s do not come in different flavours

23. increase in speed, increase in capacity, decrease in size, decrease in cost affects *every* application of computing, not just one corner of it

25. improvements in transmission speed and reductions in cost apply to *all* digital data that flows across it: there is no discrimination

26. this is the essence of Net Neutrality

28. the cost of processing anything, storing anything and transmitting anything, tends ineluctably to zero

30. because it was impossible to copy the CD's 700 Mbytes of data: the 1983 IBM PC XT had a 10 Mbytes hard disc – less than one song

31. similarly impossible to share it across the Internet: the Hayes Smartmodem, released in 1981, had a speed of 300 bits/s – about 400 hours to upload one song

33. used clever tricks to reduce music file size to 10% of original – reduced time to upload file by factor of 10

34. modem speed then 14.4 Kbit/s – less than one hour to upload/download one MP3 song: slow, but possible

36. P2P networks like BitTorrent make it even easier to distribute those files and share them in the background

37. 1 Terabyte hard disc (1000 Gbytes) costs € 50; stores 150,000 MP3s

39. a 1 Exabyte hard disc (1000 Petabytes) will cost € 50 and store every film ever recorded

40. the race to the bottom will be over

42. what does this mean for business?

44. DRM will always be broken at least once

45. DRM makes digital content less valuable than freely-available versions without it

46. digital content with DRM is actually worth *less* than zero

48. worse: many surveys show that unauthorised downloaders spend *more* on content - they are actually your *best* customers

50. the only option is to *embrace* it

51. not surprisingly, first to do so was the world of computing

52. free software/open source

53. GNU/Linux

55. GNU is ”GNU's Not Unix” - a recursive acronym

56. one man's attempt to create a free version of the leading Unix operating system

58. in March 1991, 21-year-old student Linus Torvalds started writing one ”just for fun” – in his Helsinki bedroom

59. key inflection was August 1991, when he opened up his ”Linux” project using the Internet

62. different people approach a problem in different ways

63. adding more people increases the probability that someone’s approach will match the problem in such a way that the solution is obvious (”shallow”) to that person

65. launched November 2007

68. technical support

69. training & certification

71. $5 download – all 36 tracks

72. $10 2xCD with 16-page PDF booklet

73. $75 Ghosts I-IV in a hardcover fabric slipcase containing: 2 audio CDs, 1 data DVD with all 36 tracks in multi-track format, and a Blu-ray disc with Ghosts I-IV in high-definition 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow

74. but that's not all...

77. Book 2: 48 pages of photographs

78. Book 3: two exclusive art prints

80. limited to 2,500 copies

81. gross income $750,000

83. $500 – mentions customer's name in instrumental track; $1000 – song written personally for customer

84. $5000 – comes to your house and sings for you and friends; $10,000 - *you* get to sing on her CD

86. make money in different ways

87. but sharing digital content also brings other big benefits that can save and make money

89. offer critiques of your ideas, plus their own

90. allows collaboration with companies on pre-competitive work

92. best kind of marketing: word-of-mouth recommendations to friends and family

93. allows ”try-before-you-buy”

96. analogue goods

98. encourages other companies to do the same

100. encourages open government

101. generates new business opportunities

103. more creative

104. more innovative

105. more efficient

106. more sustainable

107. more fair

108. more happy

109. more safe

111. the choice is between exploiting the resulting digital abundance by opening up...

112. ...or watching your competitors do it first – and maybe closing down

114. twitter.com/glynmoody

115. identi.ca/glynmoody

116. opendotdotdot.blogspot.com