Open vs closed, a personal view

In my last post I wrote about how open sourced CMS are damaging to the industry, but my personal opinion, is a little different.

I'm not for, or against, open sourced. I'm only against people who stick to one or the other blindly. Really I'm not, I've even contributed codes to jQuery UI and jQuery plugins and I deal with open sourced packages all the time.

However the question of open vs closed in a digital agency realm in my opinon should be decided by the client.

Given the fact that the two's benefit vs cost can be clearly defined (refer to my previous journal post). I believe agencies should present to client both options and let clients choose based on their preferances.

Clients, particularly Hong Kong ones, do not understand nor know anything digital. Which is why they come to "us". Blindly leading them into one or another is an irresponsible act as a professional. In my experience in the UK, all our clients are in fact interested to understand more about this world called web and how it operates, the choices they can make and the potential pitfalls of their choice. So you (a web professional) should never think that because they don't know, I can lead them wherever I want and they wouldn't even mind.

This may not only lead to disasters later on for the client's business, but your agency's reputation can easily be damaged when someone else from the same field starts pointing out all the errors you have made.

I'm all for open source projects, all those linux distributions and packages that I use in web projects are all open sourced. But at the end of the day - all I'm saying is that the choice shouldn't be up to us. We should present the facts to clients and have them choose.

Here is an analogy for you. It is like choosing between an electric, petrol or diesal car without knowing the difference between the three.

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