The big trend of this decade, in technology, is a move toward openness.

It started with open frequencies like 802.11. It then moved into software, with open source operating systems and applications. Now we have open source business models. The ball keeps rolling along.

Open source has proven superior in all these areas due to simple math. The more people working a problem, the better. No single organization can out-do the multitudes.

But this simple, and rather elegant, fact, is at odds with all political trends.

I'm not just talking about America here.

I'm talking about the entire world. In the name of "security," everyone seems to be clamping down on freedom. Freedom of expression is frowned-on when it gives aid-and-comfort to the terrorist enemy, even in Europe. Don't bring your Bible to the Saud family's Arabia, don't say democracy in China.

It's not just political or religious discussion that's frowned upon. Increasingly we find this in technology, too.

Beyond patents, copyrights, and trade secrets, there's the growing fear that e even talking about security holes makes them worse.

I wrote about this today in the case of Cisco Systems. They stonewalled a researcher at ISS on a major bug, got his employer to threaten him if he talked about it and, even after he did quit in order to disclose it, got a new order to shut his mouth.

The researcher, Michael Lynn, said he was being a patriot in disclosing that a buffer overflow flaw in Cisco router software could take down the whole Internet, and even now there are bad guys working on exploits.

Cisco, and the courts, disagreed.

In fact, I would say Moore's Law stands with Lynn on this one. When good and evil are matched in a race of exponents, good can only win if it's not shackled.

What that implies for our future is obvious. Freedom will win the day. The present difficulties will be just a passing phase. It's simple math.