Dictionary Definition
openness
Noun
1 without obstructions to passage or view; "the
openness of the prairies"
2 characterized by an attitude of ready
accessibility (especially about one's actions or purposes); not
secretive [ant: closeness]
3 willingness or readiness to receive (especially
impressions or ideas); "he was testing the government's
receptiveness to reform"; "this receptiveness is the key feature is
oestral behavior, enabling natural mating to occur"; "their
receptivity to the proposal" [syn: receptiveness, receptivity]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
Noun
openness- (Social) accommodating attitude or opinion, as in receptivity to new ideas, behaviors, cultures, peoples, environments, experiences, etc., different from the familiar, conventional, traditional, or one's own.
- The degree to which a person, group, organization, institution, or society exhibits this liberal attitude or opinion.
- degree of accessibility to view, use, and modify computer code in a shared environment with legal rights generally held in common and preventing proprietary restrictions on the right of others to continue viewing, using, modifying and sharing that code.
- (Systems) the degree to which a system operates with distinct boundaries across which exchange occurs capable of inducing change in the system while maintaining the boundaries themselves.
Synonyms
- (accommodating attitude or opinion) open-mindedness, approachability
Translations
receptivity to new things
- Hebrew:
Extensive Definition
Openness is a philosophy that is being used
as the basis of how various groups and organizations operate. It is
a relatively new term to describe this general way of doing
things.
It is typified by communal management, and open
access to the information or material resources needed for
projects; openness to contributions from a diverse range of
users/producers/contributors, flat hierarchies, and a fluid
organisational structure.
Communal management is usually done with
decisions being made by some form of consensus
decision-making or voting. With open repositories like
git,
individuals can take projects in their own direction without
necessarily hindering the progress of others.
It is now being put forward to facilitate the
growth of the open source and free
software programming
communities. As well as others, particularly activist groups, or as in the
philosophy of extropy (http://extropy.org/principles.htm).
See also
External links
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
access,
accessibility,
admissibility,
admission, amenableness, apparentness, approachability,
artlessness,
assimilation,
austerity, availability, baldness, bareness, big mouth, bluffness, bluntness, broadness, brusqueness, candidness, candor, childlikeness, clearness, come-at-ableness,
common speech, communicativeness,
completeness,
comprehension,
comprehensiveness,
comprisal, conversableness,
coverage,
crystal-clearness, defenselessness,
directness, distinctness, effusion, effusiveness, eligibility, embodiment, embracement, encompassment, envisagement, evidence, evidentness, exhaustiveness, exposure, extroversion, flow of
words, flowing tongue, fluency, fluent tongue, flux de
bouche, flux de paroles, flux of words, forthrightness, frankness, freedom, freeness, garrulity, garrulousness, gassiness, genuineness, getatableness, gettableness, gift of gab,
glibness, gregariousness, guilelessness, gush, gushiness, helplessness, homespun, hospitality, household
words, impressionability,
inclusion, inclusiveness, incorporation, influenceability,
ingenuousness,
innocence, invitingness, leanness, liability, long-windedness,
loose tongue, loquaciousness, loquacity, malleability, manifestness,
matter-of-factness, membership, movability, naiveness, naivete, naivety, nakedness, naturalness, nonimmunity, obtainability, obtainableness, obviousness, open mind,
open-mindedness, openheartedness,
openness to sight, outgoingness, outspokenness, overtness, palpability, participation, patentness, penetrability, perspicuity, persuadability, persuadableness,
persuasibility,
perviousness, plain
English, plain dealing, plain speaking, plain speech, plain style,
plain words, plainness, plainspokenness,
procurability,
procurableness,
prolixity, prosaicness, prosiness, reachableness, reception, receptiveness, receptivity, recipience, responsiveness, restrainedness, roundness, rustic style,
securableness,
severity, simpleheartedness,
simplemindedness,
simpleness, simplicity, sincerity, single-heartedness,
single-mindedness, singleness of heart, slush, soberness, sociability, spareness, spate of words,
starkness, straightforwardness,
suggestibility,
susceptibility,
susceptivity,
swayableness,
talkativeness,
tangibility,
tolerance, toleration, trustfulness, unadorned
style, unadornedness, unaffectedness, unconstraint, unguardedness, unimaginativeness,
unmistakableness,
unpoeticalness,
unquestionability,
unrepression,
unreserve, unreservedness, unrestraint, unrestriction, unreticence, unsecretiveness,
unsophisticatedness,
unsophistication,
unsuppression,
unsuspiciousness,
untaciturnity,
unwariness, verbosity, vernacular, visibility, volubility, vulnerability, weakness, whole, windiness