开放的意义

There are a lot of misconceptions about what open means, when it is the right strategy to apply, and the fundamental tradeoffs that go along with it. It’s very easy to cargo-cult the notion of open — using it in an imprecise or half-baked way that can obscure the real dynamics of an ecosystem, or even lead you in the wrong strategic direction. Here are a few important things to know about openness in the context of ecosystems.

对于开放的含义，何时是正确的策略，以及与之相关的基本权衡，存在着很多误解。我们很容易对开放的概念进行货真价实的崇拜--以一种不精确或半生不熟的方式使用它，这可能会掩盖生态系统的真正动态，甚至把你引向错误的战略方向。以下是关于生态系统背景下的开放性的一些重要事项。

Openness is a spectrum. A thing is not “open” or “closed” — it instead exists upon a spectrum of how open the system is.

开放性是一个光谱。一个事物不是 "开放 "或 "封闭 "的--而是存在于系统的开放程度的光谱上。

Openness is about power differentials. Fundamentally openness is about the existence of power differentials between entities: the ability for any one entity to exercise capricious power. This is an abstract notion that can be hard to reason about or apply in practice. The simplest real-world test is this: what is the worst case scenario if any specific entity in the ecosystem went greedy, incompetent, evil, or corrupt? How long would it take for the ecosystem to recover? In some cases, the answer is that the ecosystem couldn’t recover, which is clear evidence that the ecosystem has a powerful closed portion. In other cases, the ecosystem keeps right on trucking with nary a blip — a sure sign of an open ecosystem. This practical test helps identify the points of power, and also where along the spectrum of openness this ecosystem falls as a whole. The difficulty to recover should account for all of the various real-life forces (some of which are real but hard to discern) like network effects, the power of defaults, the cost of distribution, the friction of app installation, the power of established brands, ingrained user habits, etc.

开放性是关于权力差异的。从根本上说，开放是关于实体之间权力差异的存在：任何一个实体都有能力行使任性的权力。这是一个抽象的概念，在实践中可能很难推理或应用。最简单的现实世界测试是这样的：如果生态系统中的任何特定实体变得贪婪、无能、邪恶或腐败，最坏的情况是什么？生态系统需要多长时间才能恢复？在某些情况下，答案是生态系统无法恢复，这就...