Open Source’s Exaggerated Demise
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.
2 Comments »
Trackback URL RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Matt, I see OSS’s benefit in the infrastructure such as OS and communication technologies, where the standards play more crucial role to ensure interoperability. After all, that’s the way the technological evolution happens - once an edge technology becomes a commodity, an infrastructure utilised by a new edge, higher level technology.
Comment by funTomas — 3/31/2007 @ 4:56 pm
The ability to write your own extended features for existing applications or entire software packages as needed is something that will be relevant and applicable to any entity or organization as long as a need for new functionality and greater efficiency is required, which is to say forever. Open source will never die, if for no other reason than some people simply like to write code and others simply like to use code. If you look at some of the Firefox extensions that have been created, you will find some amazing usage statistics. And think of the P2P world. On the sourceforge.net statistics, the eMule download statistics are approaching 300 million. The Azures BitTorrent Client has over 140 million downloads.
The huge boom that was the result of a new venue for software creation, distribution, and rollout may be slowing. But the idea that open source software is on its way out is simply wishful thinking and negative propaganda on behalf of those who became filthy rich off of closed-source, proprietary packages (Microsoft). The idea of open source is in itself philosophical in nature, much like the works of Plato, Martin Luther, or Ghandi. Even if open source were outlawed one day, people would still partake in it.
Comment by Concerned Citizen — 4/2/2007 @ 7:25 am