Photo “CHINESE FOOD OPEN” rights attributed to mag3737 on Flickr

A few weeks ago, Rupert over at chapterplay.tv blogged about OpenIndie and raised some really interesting questions which at the time I replied to in the comments. However, I think it’s worth answering one of them in particular on here as well.

What does the “open” in OpenIndie mean. You’d be right to be thinking along lines of open source software. I think it’s also important to think in terms of transparency and opening the relationship between filmmaker and audience. A lot of our values, especially mine as a developer, come from admiration and use of open source software. Crowdsourcing is fundamental to what we’re doing. Filmmakers are crowdsourcing audiences and screenings. We are crowdsourcing our startup funding and will be asking users and filmmakers on the site to shape the future of the site. In that way the community contributes to the site in the same way that developers contribute to open source software.

As for actually making our code and data open source, we very much admire the approach that Automattic have taken with Wordpress and I would certainly like to make our entire code base open source one day. This isn’t something that’s going to happen over night, or any time in the near future for that matter. We have some very definite goals for phase one and two and if/when we do open source openindie’s code, it will need to be prepared and planned carefully.

In terms of our data we’re strong proponents of Data Portability and will be making our data available via our API which is planned, at the moment, for development during phase three. During this process we’ll be making as much data available as humanly possible to allow anyone, anywhere in the world to build application using our data. All salient data is geo-locatable, meaning that every piece of data in our database which could potentially be mapped, can be. We hope this will bring with it fantastic opportunities for audiences and filmmakers alike.

I hope that gives you an insight into our thinking behind the name OpenIndie and don’t forget if you’re a filmmaker or film fan there’s still a way you can get involved. Simply, visit our Kickstarter campaign for phase two and donate. $100 gets you a filmmaker account to go live in phase two and $1+ gets you a user account where you can request and screen films.

For all the latest on what’s happening with OpenIndie, follow us on Twitter:

@openindie | @arincrumley | @kieranmasterton

Kieran Masterton

OpenIndie Co-Founder