> What lack of openness exactly? I believe the openness the author is talking about isn't merely the ability to get a photo back out. It's the ability to have

> What lack of openness exactly? I believe the openness the author is talking about isn't merely the ability to get a photo back out. It's the ability to have your photos be portable. That you have the ability to store the photos wherever you'd like. And the ability for anyone else to clone and modify the application. And your ability to seamlessly start using that without having to download and upload your photos all over again. Much of it is philosophical but if Flickr had embraced this model it wouldn't have stagnated for the last 5 years. > Yeah, Linux ... I know. We're trying to move away from open and free. In 4 weeks the name won't even have "Open" in it. > Ah... ok, I wish I had read this first and I wouldn't even have bothered posting this. Don't let this discredit the entire article. Even if you disagree with it there's some very forward thinking approaches to how to store and handle user data. The web would be a better place if applications in the future at least adopted parts of it. Disclaimer: I started this thing.