That's a good question really. And one which the site kind of just wishes to raise.
What makes Apple & Microsoft products closed, and what makes Red Hat or Neuros open? Clearly it's because their products and the companies themselves have a set of qualities which determine that.
Those qualities aren't completely clear, or defined, and yet, it's pretty generally accepted that Apple is closed and Red Hat is open.
Most people interested in open-source are aware of a some of those qualities and look them up when deciding on purchases, but they're shifting and changing (as Apple recently showed with the introduction of the MacBook Air which didn't have a removeable battery - does making it more difficult to swap out a specific component in a device make it more 'closed'?).
I think our target market has an idea of the qualities we're trying to quantify, but the real question is, do they care? Do they care enough to submit the products that they do the research on for themselves, to a site like isitopen?
When you say the markup is not very good. What do you mean exactly?
We don't have a graphic designer, so I can understand the lack of aesthetic appeal. However, are you seeing issues with the CSS/HTML? How do you measure how well it works?
He's probably referring to the bulk of inline styling and javascript, and using tables for your layout. It should be fixed, but honestly the design has bigger problems than the code right now.
We've just recently finished a proof-of-concept site called 'isitopen'. It is designed to allow users submit and review consumer devices regarding how 'open' they are (i.e. available source-code, documentation, standardized plugs, etc.)
We've hit a point where we don't know where to go from here, whether the idea is even a good one, or how to market it.
Ho, stop, by who? The lay-out isn't very appealing and looks like it's still under construction.
I get the idea of the site, but, what do you want to say with it?
People who care about open-ness of their 'to-buy'-device are more likely to do their own research, this site helps with that, but does it really fill a gap?
Ditto on the last point. It doesn't seem to be about hardware compatibility as such, rather some intangible "openness" quality. If I were interested in the openness as an inherently valuable trait, then I would probably care about other things like the ethical and environmental credentials of the manufacturer (because I probably care about non-functional traits). If I'm looking for information on the ability of my hardware to interact with particular software, then surely the "hardware compatibility" section of that software's web site would be my first place to look? I guess I just don't see the gap that this is filling.
I like the idea of power plug proprietary-ness being written down somewhere, but if it were a real problem, I could probably find that information in user reviews on Amazon or similar.
So I'm just not sure that I can think of any instances where I would want to use a site that only tells me about the ideological aspects of my purchase, without particular reference to what the real hardware/software compatibility situation is, and which similarly doesn't give you the whole story in terms of whether I should buy from this manufacturer or not.
Sorry, I should have disclaimed. The site is very much alpha, so there are plans for a layout overhaul still. We've only just got something basic working and wanted to get some feedback before continuing.
As someone who's done a lot of research into how open a device is before they buy, I've found that I spend a lot of time searching for products which meet my needs. The site should help cut down the time needed in order to find open products.
Whether it fills a specific gap is debatable. Perhaps we should look at building the user-driven 'review' aspect of the site more, and let people discuss functionality more.
How about some sort of browser plugin that works with Amazon or other sites and automatically shows your openness numbers for whatever device I'm looking at?
The feedback has been incredibly useful, and has really given us an idea of where we need to focus our efforts.