Dare Obasanjo argues that open source is becoming irrelevant because people are increasingly using social software whose core value is in the user base, not the technology. This is a valid point: Tim O’Reilly says that the new “Intel Inside” is data, but I think that in many cases a thriving community is a more valuable asset.
Nonetheless, the implication that this spells the end of open source is off the mark. The other day I read an intriguing point/counterpoint that touches on some of the themes of my Future of Applications essay. I was struck, in particular, by one of the arguments made towards the end in favor of desktop applications:
For example, my company is using a certain web application for sales force management. It is very comprehensive, but I currently have an open support issue regarding integration with my critical business infrastructure. If it was a desktop application with a nice scripting language, we could have done it in-house. Instead, it is a web app and we have been blocked for over two weeks now - and we’re powerless to move things faster.
This reminded me of a post I wrote a couple of years ago, in which I argued that one of the principle advantages of decentralized software architectures is the ability to innovate on the edges:
Imagine now that our moderation system is a P2P-style module that runs as a plugin inside the web browser of each user. Now all the strain of creating, retrieving and collating the ratings can be offloaded on to the client machines. The same goes for recommendations and other features. What in the aggregate would represent an untenable load can be quite manageable when spread across potentially millions of users’ machines. And anyone with a cool idea can write a plugin that adds new features to an existing website.
I believe that this type of “distributed innovation” will continue to be extremely important for the foreseeable future. Closed web applications are therefore more likely to become an endangered species than open source software.
 Thank you PCWorld for making AllPeers the winner of the File-Sharing category of its “101 Fantastic Freebies” in front of Pando and uTorrent.
PC World editors tested and evaluated hundreds of downloads and services before narrowing it down to the top 101, with a designated “winner” in each of 23 categories from desktop search tools to video sites. Each service or program had to meet certain criteria in terms of design, usefulness, functionality, and of course, they all had to be free.
More support for another recurring theme of this blog. Despite being one of the most popular vlogs, Rocketboom isn’t making enough money from advertising to “sustain its future growth” (which might or might not be a euphemism for financing its current operations). If Rocketboom is facing this issue, imagine what life must be like for the zillions of less popular vlogs, not to mention all the sites that could exist, but don’t because of financial considerations. Getting people to pay for stuff on the web is still difficult, but once someone cracks that nut we’re going to see an explosion in high-quality content.
Tim O’Reilly started a firestorm of commentary on the death of the newspaper by reporting a rumor that the San Francisco Chronicle is struggling. Mike Arrington expounds on a theme that I’ve been harping on for nearly two years:
Print media is what it is. I can’t imagine anyone will be printing news on paper twenty years from now in the industrialized world, so the only question is when it will go away, not if. At some point, these circulation numbers will begin to vaporize. And when it’s over for the New York Times, I can’t imagine many others will be around, either.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: what is really going to throw the publishing world for a loop is the popularization of convenient, readable, portable electronic paper:
The inevitable conclusion is that book industry, and booksellers in particular, are heading for trouble. It’s a technical certainty that someone will eventually invent a lightweight, flexible e-tome that will let you carry around a veritable library wherever you wander and read any of thousands of selections with the same convenience as a regular book. In my opinion, this is going to happen sooner rather than later; certainly within the next five years. Amazon and company will be well-placed to take advantage of this trend (I dare say they’d be rather pleased to reduce their reliance on physical inventory), but the bricks-and-mortar guys may find themselves struggling to justify their existence.
This is, of course, a corollary of the opt-repeated notion that “social media” (get off my back, I like overhyped neologisms) such as blogs will spell the death of traditional publications. In my view, the only reason anyone reads newspapers anymore is that the form factor is so convenient for reading on the bus, couch or exercise bike. Once that consideration goes away, all hell is going to break lose. The writing’s been on the wall for ages, so to speak, but there’s no indication that publishers are even remotely prepared.
UPDATE: Cedric just took me to task about this post, and I agree that overstated my case somewhat. There are other reasons people buy newspapers beyond the ability to read them on the toilet: for one thing, they invest in the best writers and editors. And I’m sure that people will continue to read professional journalism forever. What I should have said is that, while it’s well-accepted that newspapers are now facing greater competition than ever before, they are going to face much, much more once it becomes convenient to read electronic content while on the go.
Everyone agrees that software applications are changing in a fundamental way, but no one seems to know exactly how. The massively hyped Web 2.0 phenomenon is all about moving applications to the web and using equally hyped AJAX techniques to simulate the experience of using a desktop app. One of the earliest examples was web mail, which has been followed by online calendars, web processors and even spreadsheets. But soon people were arguing that moving everything to the web was overkill; instead we should “webify” desktop apps, giving them the connectivity and mobility of web apps but with the slickness and responsiveness of traditional software.
And then there are those who contend that any app you have to download and install is doomed to failure. Certainly there’s something to this: witness Grouper and iMeem, both of which started out as rich clients but ended up repositioning as more traditional web portals. On the other hand, there are many counterexamples, the most prominent of which is Skype. Maybe the answer is adding offline capabilities to web apps, so you can use them even when you’re not hooked up to the net and synch to a server when you reconnect. Or Firefox extensions, which combine many of the advantages of desktop and web applications and might take the world by storm if they weren’t restricted to a specific brand of browser.
Existing Approaches Compared
Here, roughly, are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach:
|
Strengths |
Weaknesses |
| Desktop apps |
Fast, responsive
Total control over the computer
Data resides on the local disk
Don’t require internet connectivity |
Must be pre-installed or downloaded
Might conceal spyware and viruses
Hard to use on someone else’s computer
Generally don’t run on all operating systems |
| Web apps |
No need to download or manage
Run everywhere
Data is always accessible |
Less control over your data
Slower and fiddlier to use |
| Webified desktop apps |
All the strengths of desktop apps
Connectivy/ubiquitous data access |
All the weaknesses of desktop apps |
| Offline-enabled web apps |
All the strengths of web apps
Don’t require internet connectivity
Potentially more control of data |
Same fiddly web interface
Still tend to rely on centralized data storage |
| Firefox extensions |
Run on all major operating systems
Can modify whole browsing experience
Total control over local machine
User interface as good or better than web apps
Easier to download/install than full apps |
Only work on Firefox
Still require download and management
Can render browser unstable |
Clearly the last three categories trump the first two and can be considered genuine improvements, not alternatives. In other words, old-school desktop and web apps are on their way out. The newer approaches offer incremental progress but are all lacking in certain areas. And with clear trade-offs involved (can you have ubiquitious data access without yielding control over your data to some third party?), it’s probably impossible to gain all the advantages without suffering some of the drawbacks. Some people feel that the ability to run everywhere makes up for the shortcomings of web user interfaces, but not everyone agrees. Extensions are superior in many ways but lack ubiquity and have the major (some would say fatal) flaw of running in an environment (the browser) that is less robust and battle-tested than a full-blown operating system.
Naturally the right way to develop and deploy an application depends to some degree on what it does. The first apps to exploit the web model were straightforward information storage, management and retrieval tools. Companies don’t hesitate to develop these ad hoc to solve specific tasks like digitizing a product catalog or customer database, so the ease of developing web apps for data entry (forms) and presentation (dynamic web pages) is a big plus. Sophisticated editing or design apps with a highly dynamic user interface are a different story. Nonetheless, there is clearly convergence going on, and even the slickest most sophisticated UIs are starting to move online.
 Thanks to Red Herring for naming AllPeers a Finalist of Red Herring 100 Europe, an award given to the top 100 private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region.
Red Herring’s editorial staff rigorously evaluated more than 700 private companies through an analysis of financial data and subjective criteria, including quality of management, execution of strategy, and dedication to research and development.
I was traveling back from London yesterday, and since my laptop battery is pretty much toast (time to get a new one), I was delighted to see that they now have special laptop stations with power outlets in Terminal 1. Unfortunately, when I went to plug in my computer, I discovered that the socket was inset slightly, and that my plug adapter (obviously I have a European plug) wouldn’t fit. Of course, this is only a minor consideration because I doubt that many people in Heathrow are foreigners. It’s only an airport, after all. Also, this only presents a problem for people from countries whose plugs are different from British ones. So if you’re from Malta or Oman, you’re good.
My good friends at Joost, a really cool upcoming video client based on Mozilla, just sent me a mail saying that I have a couple of days to use or lose my last two remaining beta invites. I’ve already invited all my friends who wanted to try it out, so the first two people to leave a comment to this post can have them.
Tim O’Reilly commented the other day on an interesting blog post, the gist of which is that it’s hard-to-impossible to make real money from an advertising-funded website.
As I’ve surely ranted many times in the past, the logical conclusion is that media on the web won’t be exclusively (or even primarily, in my opinion) funded by advertising. Most of the traditional media that has a good model for direct payments (films, music, print) is at least partially (and in many cases mostly or entirely) financed by that means. The only real exception is television, for the simple reason that advertising was the only technically feasible model until relatively recently.
The counterargument is the oft-heard assertion that “people won’t pay for content on the web.” Of course, this claim is true in exactly the way that, once upon a time, most people wouldn’t set foot on an airplane or eat sushi or buy a Czech-made car. But once the quality of the experience or product — and the peer pressure to try it out — rose to a certain level, suddenly everyone piled on, and now it seems like you can’t leave the house without seeing people noshing on maguro nigiri in their Skoda Superb while on the way to the airport. Buying content online is still pretty inconvenient and people aren’t used to doing it. But the medium is very young, and the status quo says very little about the way things will end up once the dust has settled.
We recently installed FeedBurner for this blog thanks to this awesome plug-in for WordPress.
We like FeedBurner and even more so since we have now discovered that we have circa 1,500 subscribers to this blog. Please take 47 seconds of your time and leave a comment to let us know who you are and why you have subscribed to our blog. This will help us make sure we blog relevant topics. Example of answers are:
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These are just examples, don’t be shy, let us know in the comments why you are a subscriber. Thanks!
The Free Software Foundation has some intelligent suggestions for steps that Apple could take to back up their claimed anti-DRM stance. I went ahead and signed their electronic petition, which I’m sure has Jobs quaking in his pointy boots.
I don’t know whether the New York Times article “Palm Responds to the iPhone” is all that interesting, but I do know that they missed a golden opportunity. Why on earth didn’t they entitle the article “Palm Answers the iPhone”?
 We’ve always seen AllPeers as a way to add new capabilities to the web browser without facing the Sisyphean task of creating and marketing a brand new browser. So when we set out to create our Drag-n-Share Firefox extension, we didn’t just take the most direct route to deploying the functionality we felt our users would want. We also built a powerful platform with features that could be used by many types of next-generation web applications: a generic resource framework, a scalable data store and of course a full-fledged peer-to-peer network. By baking the tricky bits into the browser platform, we hope that AllPeers will simplify the deployment of applications that work with structured data (like microformats), store this data where it makes the most sense (whether on the user’s machine or on a centralized server) and make real-time communication between users a snap.
Of course, we’re unlikely to revolutionize the web all by ourselves. That’s why we’re proud to announce that we’ve opened up the source code for AllPeers to other software developers. We hope that this will encourage developers to join our community, help us to improve our code and create their own applications on top of our platform.
The best way for developers to learn about our platform is to visit our new developer site. We’ve made a major effort to provide documentation and guidelines for hacking AllPeers. Of course, you can never have enough documentation, and we’ll continue to make adding information to the site a major priority.
I’d never worked on an open source project before we decided to use Mozilla as the basis for AllPeers, so I didn’t really know what to expect. As it transpires, the experience has exceeded my expectations on many levels. Building on top of a platform is orders of magnitude easier when you can peer inside and figure out what’s going on. More importantly, the notion of “community” isn’t just theoretical in the open source world. Mozilla has become a major part of my life, and I spend a significant proportion of my time interacting with the new friends I’ve made, exchanging ideas, solving technical problems or just shooting the breeze with like-minded folks.
In addition to using their code, we haven’t hesitated to adopt the tools, practices and philosophy that have made Mozilla a success. I hope that by open sourcing AllPeers we’ll be able to give something back.
I anticipated a trend with my previous post about the rise of Apple at the expense of Microsoft. A couple of days later RoughlyDrafted ran a similarly themed but much more detailed story that seems to pin the blame for Microsoft’s decline on its complacency and a crisis of leadership, the same factors that sent Apple into a tailspin two decades ago. The analysis makes for good reading, though there is one glaring factual error:
In contrast, there has been one CEO of Microsoft since 1984: Steve Ballmer. Along with Chairman Bill Gates, Ballmer has always set the course for the company, giving Microsoft a singular personality in contrast to the turbulent changes during Apple’s middle decade.
Actually, Bill Gates was CEO of Microsoft for most of its existence. Ballmer took over in 2000, and arguably the company’s real woes started at about that time. Gates is an exceptional individual who always commanded unquestioned authority, a must for running a large and complex organization. Ballmer was a good right-hand man but, by many accounts, an inadequate replacement for Gates in the corner office. This mistake is surprising since the true story actually supports the author’s thesis (which I also subscribe to) that Microsoft’s problems are largely due to management issues. (And considering Gates’s iconic status throughout the 80’s and 90’s, it’s hard for me to believe that anyone could think that “Ballmer has always set the course for the company.” Am I really that old?)
Another recent article credits Apple’s growing market share on the halo effect of Apple’s celebrated consumer electronics devices, a point I also mentioned. The author points out that this effect is likely to grow with the launch of the iPhone. I’ve spoken in the past about the tendency of exponential curves to appear linear in the early stages. There’s probably a magic market share number that will cause the Mac to “tip” and really take off. It’s hard to say what this number might be, but it’s looking more and more likely that Apple is going to hit it at some point.
For years, Apple has had what most cognoscenti consider to be a superior operating system when compared to Windows. Nonetheless, Apple’s market share in the personal computer space has remained stubbornly mired in the low to mid single digits. An article in NetworkWorld argues that Macs may start to experience increased success in the corporate world. The main reason, Apple’s switch to Intel processors, may well have a similar effect in the home market, since the ability to run Windows programs efficiently, when needed, removes one of the few remaining pain points that might be experienced when switching to the Mac.
There are plenty of other reasons to anticipate an uptick in the Mac’s fortunes. The switch to Vista in general is an opportunity to take a step back and consider other options, particularly considering all the problems people are encountering. Moreover, the Apple brand is getting a huge boost from its success in the consumer electronics space, combined with a practical advantage since its phenomenally popular gizmos work best with its own computers.
But what may give Apple the biggest boost is Microsoft’s adoption of the so-called Next-Generation Secure Computing Base in Vista. While this technology ostensibly makes computers more “secure”, what it really does is restrict what you, the user, can do with your own machine. This is particularly useful for — you guessed it — the most obnoxious and intrusive sort of DRM. This reflects an attitude, long palpable at Microsoft, of putting the company’s perceived strategic interests ahead of what users want. Often when using Microsoft software I get the feeling that functionality has been designed with some hidden agenda in mind, although the visible result is simply that end users get annoyed and frustrated.
Apple, on the other hand, has tended to put user experience before all else. Steve Jobs’s famous DRM essay is a case in point. Some may question his motives, but to me this is simply another example of trying to give users what they want (i.e. no DRM). I’ve used Windows exclusively for the past 15 years, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to use a computer infected with Vista and its user-fiendish DRM. Since I don’t actually need to be on Windows anymore, it looks like my next computer will be a Mac.
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