In this episode of Open Signal, Bob Dunn shares the concept of the open web, explaining what it is, why it matters, and how it impacts our digital lives. Noticing that “the open web” is a term frequently mentioned but rarely defined, Bob Dunn sets out to provide a clear and straightforward refresher.
He discusses the main principles, including open standards, permissionless publishing, interoperability, linking, and decentralization, and compares them to closed, “walled garden” platforms.
The episode also covers the origins of the open web, the current pressures it faces, and the ways it is experiencing renewal. Whether you are already a supporter of the open web or simply curious about its significance, this episode delivers practical insights you can share with others.
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Takeaways
- Definition of the Open Web: The open web is built on open, freely usable standards where anyone can publish, link to, and read content without needing permission from any single company, and with no account required, making it accessible to anyone with a browser.
- Core Technologies Behind the Open Web: Fundamental technologies like HTTP, HTML, URLs, and RSS are not owned by any single entity and enable the open web’s functionality and accessibility.
- Historical Decision Impact: The web’s foundation as a public commons was shaped by Tim Berners-Lee and CERN’s decision in 1993 to put the web’s underlying software into the public domain, allowing anyone to use and build on it royalty-free.
- Key Principles of the Open Web: Five central ideas define the open web—open standards, permissionless publishing, the ability to link to anything, interoperability and portability, and decentralization, preventing single-entity control.
- Contrast with Walled Gardens: Unlike the open web, walled gardens (closed platforms) require accounts, dictate visibility through algorithms, restrict linking and exporting, and can revoke user content at their discretion.
- Diverse Interpretations of the Open Web: Different communities, such as Mozilla, IndieWeb, and open source advocates, emphasize different aspects of the open web, from user rights and choice to content and identity ownership.
- Open Web vs. Open Source: Open source refers to software licensing and code sharing, while the open web concerns how information is published and accessed, with overlaps but distinct meanings.
- Current Challenges and Renewal: While the open web faces pressures from content being locked behind logins and the dominance of large platforms, there are also signs of renewal through decentralized social networks and continued vitality of protocols like RSS.
- Essence and Preservation: The open web is a public commons built on shared standards, and it endures only if people continue to use it, build on it, and value it.
Questions This Episode Answers
Q: What is the open web and how is it defined in simple terms?
A: The open web is the part of the internet that’s built on open, freely usable standards where anyone can publish, link to, and read content without seeking permission from a single company. It’s accessible by anyone with a browser, no account required, and isn’t owned or controlled by any one entity (Bob Dunn, 02:44–03:13).
Q: What are the five main principles that define the open web?
A: The five main ideas behind the open web are: open standards (publicly documented, free to use technologies), permissionless publishing (anyone can put content online), linking (anything can point to anything else), interoperability and portability (content can move and be accessed with different tools), and decentralization (no single owner or central control) (Bob Dunn, 05:30–06:38).
Q: How does the open web differ from “walled gardens” or closed platforms?
A: Unlike the open web, walled gardens are closed ecosystems—like social platforms and app stores—where content lives inside one company’s system, often requiring accounts, controlled by algorithms, and difficult to export or link to. In walled gardens, the company controls visibility and access, and content can disappear on their terms (Bob Dunn, 06:54–07:32).
Q: Why was the early decision by CERN to make the web’s software public domain so important?
A: CERN’s decision in 1993 to release the web’s underlying software into the public domain meant anyone could use, build, and create browsers or servers without paying or asking for permission. This led to rapid, decentralized growth, enabling today’s public commons-like web rather than a controlled, licensed product (Bob Dunn, 04:02–04:48).
Q: What are some examples of current trends or technologies continuing the open web’s legacy?
A: Decentralized social networks like Mastodon (using ActivityPub), the Fediverse, and Bluesky’s AT protocol, as well as ongoing use of RSS, are all examples of technologies giving people social and publishing tools without reliance on single companies. These tools keep the spirit of open, permissionless connectivity alive (Bob Dunn, 10:47–11:18).
Q: How is the term “open web” used differently in the advertising or antitrust context?
A: In advertising and antitrust discussions, “open web” often specifically refers to ads shown on independent websites, as opposed to proprietary ad spaces on major platforms’ owned apps or sites. This is a narrower, more technical business meaning of the phrase (Bob Dunn, 08:56–09:19).
Q: What’s the relationship between open source and the open web?
A: Open source relates to how software is licensed—whether anyone can view, modify, and share the code—while the open web is about how information is published and accessed. They’re closely related, with many open web sites built on open source software (like WordPress), but the concepts are distinct (Bob Dunn, 09:29–09:59).
Q: What are some current pressures or threats facing the open web today?
A: The open web faces challenges from the consolidation of attention on a few large platforms, the rise of content behind logins or paywalls, and AI crawlers scraping open web content, prompting some publishers to reconsider openness. There is concern among advocates that this may lead to a shrinking open web, even as new decentralized options are emerging (Bob Dunn, 10:24–10:45).
Episode Transcript
Bob Dunn: Hello, Bob here, and welcome to Open Channels FM Podcast Network and today’s episode of Open Signal.
Well, I use the phrase “the open web” a lot. It’s how I describe this network. It comes up in nearly every conversation we have with guests or just in conversations between our hosts. And I realized myself that I’ve never really actually stopped to define it. A couple days ago, I realized this and I started thinking more about it and the definition of open web. And even though, like I said, it can be scattered in various episodes, I’ve never really done it myself. Reason being is I know the concept, but I needed a more clear extended understanding that I could wrap around my brain, or maybe what I call a refresher course.
So I started asking Claude a bit about it to reassure myself that I know what I was talking about or thinking about. And that led me here and there across the web while going down some serious rabbit holes. And I mean serious. I pulled notes together, I revisited them, I ended up with more than I ever thought possible. So today I’m going to give it a shot and hoping this is somewhat of a simpler version than the results I originally got. This may be stuff you already know. And I’m sure there are places that could and should be filled in with more details. But hey, for those that would just like to learn about it or are in need of a refresher course, this is for you. So bear with me today on this somewhat scripted show. Gotta have notes for this kind of stuff.
So here’s the simplest version I can give you. The open web is part of the internet built on open, freely usable standards where anyone can publish, link to, and read content without asking permission from a single company. That’s pretty straightforward. That’s it. No account required. There’s none of this gatekeeping or approving your site. You put something up and basically anybody with a browser can reach it. And it still exists. And that’s what we’re so behind here.
Now, those pieces that made it possible are things nobody owns. HTTP, which moved pages around, HTML, which describes them, URLs, which give everything an address, and formats like RSS, gotta love RSS, which lets people follow what you publish without going through a platform in the middle.
Now we have to kind of understand why the web works this way, and it goes back to the beginning. Now I’m not going to go down a big long history lesson for you, but a guy Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web in 1989, while he was working at CERN, the physics lab in Switzerland. It was meant to help researchers share information across different computers and systems. And in 1993, CERN did something that shaped everything that came afterwards. It put the web’s underlying software into the public domain, royalty-free. Anyone could use it, build on it, and make their browsers and servers without paying anyone or asking anyone.
Now, I think about that decision a lot. Imagine if it had gone another way. I’m sure everybody has thought about this. If the web had been a licensed product owned by one organization, it certainly would’ve grown very differently, probably slower, probably more controlled. I probably wouldn’t be here. Instead, it became something closer to a public commons, and the standards that keep it working have been looked after by groups like W3C ever since, so that no one company gets to decide how it all fits together.
Now, just as I’m trying to touch on this and hopefully pulling in the facts as they should be pulled in, there’s really no official rulebook for the open web, but most people who talk about it come back to some handful of ideas. I not only found this in my research, you know, Claude brought it up a few times, so let me just give you about 5 of these and I’ll walk through them.
First, open standards. The technology is publicly documented and free to use. That’s why a browser made by one group can read a page served by a completely different group and it just works.
Second, permissionless publishing. You don’t need anyone’s approval to put something online. You get a domain, you set up a site, and the whole world can reach it.
Third, the link. This one’s easy to take for granted, really. Anything on the web can point to anything else. That simple ability is what turned a pile of documents into a web in the first place.
Fourth, interoperability and portability. Your content isn’t trapped. You can move it to a new host, switch tools, change your theme. And the people who follow you can use whatever reader or app they like to, to keep up.
And the 5th, decentralization. There’s no single owner, no central switch someone can flip to turn off the whole thing or change the rules for everyone overnight.
So when you think about it, all those things are put together and you get something pretty remarkable. A system where the default is access. And it isn’t permission.
But let’s look at the other hand, what the open web is not. Sometimes the easiest way to understand something is to look at its opposite. And for the open web, the opposite has a name: walled gardens. These are the social platforms, app stores, and closed ecosystems where content lives inside one company’s system. Hey, we’re on a lot of those and they’re a part of our lives now. You need an account to see it. An algorithm decides who sees it. You often can’t link to it cleanly, can’t export it, and can’t take your audience with you if you leave. And it can disappear on that company’s terms, not yours.
Simple way to picture that difference: say you write a post on your own site, on your own domain, with an RSS feed. That’s the open web. Now say you write the exact same words, but only inside a closed app. Now technically, both of those travel over the internet, but only one of them is really yours, and only one of them anyone can reach without signing up for something.
Now I’m not saying platforms are evil. I use them. Most of us do. You know, I think some of us have questions. Some of us begrudgingly use some platforms. But it matters which one is the foundation and which one is the extra. When the platform becomes the only place your work lives, you’ve handed over a lot of control.
Now, I want to be honest about something. The open web doesn’t have an official definition. And here I’m trying to put something out, but just giving you an idea of where we stand. Different groups lean on different parts of it. For example, Mozilla tends to frame it around user rights and choice. The IndieWeb community focuses on owning your own content and your own identity online. And a lot of us open source folks often care about the standards and the code. All these things overlap, but they’re not identical.
There’s also a second meaning of the phrase you might run into, and it can be a bit confusing. I figured this one out by reading some docs over and over. In the advertising world and a lot of antitrust coverage, open web means something narrower. It refers to ads shown on independent websites as opposed to ads inside the big companies’ own properties. So if you see the term in a news story about ad tech, that’s usually what they mean. It’s related, but it’s a much more technical business use of the words.
Now, there is one more distinction I think is worth making. Open source and the open web are close cousins, but they’re not the same thing. Open source is about how software is licensed. Can you see the code, change it, share it? The open web is about how information is published and reached. I’ve talked about WordPress in the past a lot. It’s a great example where the two meet. It’s open source software that a huge part of the open web runs on. But you could build an open website with closed tools or use open source software inside a closed platform.
So where are we now? Well, before I go any further, a lot of you know what I’ve said. A lot of you are agreeing. Some of you may have even said, I’ve heard this 1,000 times, but it’s still always nice to revisit it. So when we talk about this today, because the open web is under real pressure and has also seen some genuine renewal, both things are true at once.
On the pressure side, a lot of attention has consolidated into a few large platforms. More content sits behind logins and paywalls, and AI crawlers are pulling from the web in ways that have a lot of publishers rethinking what they leave open. Some of us look at all of that and worry the open web is slowly shrinking.
But there’s another side. Decentralized social networks built on open protocols, like ActivityPub, the thing behind Mastodon, the wider Fediverse, are giving people a way to be social without handing everything to one company. The AT protocol behind Bluesky is another take on the same idea. The IndieWeb movement keeps reminding us that your own site can be the hub. And RSS, which people have declared dead more times than I can count, is still quietly doing its job. You wouldn’t be listening to this where you are if it wasn’t for RSS.
Now, with that all said, if I could sum it up all in one line, it would be this. The open web is the web as a public commons built on shared standards instead of owned platforms. And like any commons, it only stays that way if people keep using it, building on it, caring about it. And really, that wraps back around to why this network exists.
So I wanted to share that with you, even though a lot of you are firm advocates of the open web and open source, know all this, but it might be worth passing it on to somebody that doesn’t. You can always share this episode with someone that may have that question.
One final comment. I want to kind of go off on a little tangent here at the end. Remember when I said I wanted to turn this podcast, Open Signal, into more of my own, making it my commentary? And remember how I said this is something that I don’t do a lot of, as I prefer conversations versus me always talking? Keyword is always. And also, the other changes I’ve been talking about over the last few months with all our podcasts, well, next week, yes, next week, I’ll be sharing the definitive reason you should be listening to us and really what you can expect with each podcast.
So that actually felt kind of good just talking about open web and open source. We’re thinking about this all the time. We talk about a little bit here and there. We preach it, we advocate it, we do whatever. But for me, it was a nice moment in time to actually sit down and talk it through. Everything I said was already in my head. Just need to kind of pull it together.
Until the next time, take care.
