A Good Day for Openness

Nov 4th brought some exciting developments for openness in several different domains.

First, we elected a president dedicated to government transparency and accessibility. I hope that Obama's "Google for Government" bill is a harbinger of things to come in his administration. Making more information freely available and searchable will allow the better functioning of our government.

Second, a slightly more wonky development. The FCC approved unlicensed use of the "white spaces." This is the culmination of a 4+ year-long process, with heavy lobbying in the past year or so. It opens up huge swaths of spectrum, which any citizen or innovator can put to use for things like wireless broadband.

Third, a geeky development. Somebody rooted the G1 -- the first handset based on the open-source Android operating system. Although the operating system itself is open-source, T-Mobile had locked down all of the interesting stuff. Now that it's unlocked, we will likely see a plethora of interesting development on the platform.