ZDNet Must Read:
Google makes Chrome OS open source
Google made the early code available to the open source community and claims external developers will have the same access to the code as internal Google developers.... Continued »
Category: 2009 Preview
July 8th, 2009
Will ChromeOS make Google more loved or hated in open source world?
Google’s plans to launch an open source operating system is not only a potential game changer for Microsoft but also likely a big blow for Ubuntu and other Linux hopefuls on the desktop.
But its success depends somewhat on support by the open source community. Google promises to open source its code later this year and will “soon” begin working with the open source community.
Provided those promises are kept, the Chrome OS, an open source, web focused and lightweight OS, will spread like wildfire on netbooks and laptops. A clean interface? A fast bootup? The dream has come true.
For more than a decade I have written about Linux’s prospects on the desktop and quoted many who predicted Microsoft’s massacre at the hands of the open source operating system. Today, Linux holds less than two percent market share and few would make the same prediction today without looking silly.
For many in the open source camp, Ubuntu is (or was) the game changer that would have Microsoft at least scurrying to protect its virtual ownership of the desktop. Michael Dell virtually endorsed it.
Ubuntu has enjoyed some success on the desktop, particularly on the netbook, but I think it’s fair to say that it hasn’t turned out to be the commercial success that once seemed possible.
Google’s Chrome OS — like its counterpart browser — may be the real shot heard ’round the world. Google says it will be available to consumers in the second half of 2010 but I’ll bet it makes its debut on netbooks within a year’s time.
Why talk about it now?
“Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve,” Google wrote on its introductory blog yesterday.
“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”
Dreamy. This should be exciting stuff for open source backers (and for the rest of the world) but few in the community are celebrating. Google’s commercial strength and market power have always undermined its efforts to get support in the open source sector. For many, Google is simply the next gen Microsoft pretending the carry the open source banner but not really abiding by the core principles of the movement.
In its first year on the market, for instance, the open source Chrome browser has amassed only less than two percent market share while Firefox, the original open source browser, rocks at almost 23 percent share. It’s still too early to judge which one will reign but most in the open source community would prefer Mozilla’s success.
It’s just the vibe I get. Am I wrong?
Google has its open source backers and several prominent people in the open source world are employed by Google. Perhaps its seemingly inevitable success is probable whether or not it the general open source community cares. What’s your take?
Is Google more loved or hated today by the open source community? Why? Dies it matter?
And what impact will the introduction of the Chrome OS have on Google’s reputation in the open source community? Please weigh in.
June 2nd, 2009
Red Hat's Fedora 11 to offer interop with Microsoft Exchange
Red Hat is not going to let the Microsoft-Novell partnership dim its own prospects for interoperability.
That seems to be the case with the Red Hat-sponsored open source Fedora project, which plans to release on June 9 a major upgrade of its free Linux that offers robust integration with Microsoft Exchange via a new feature called OpenChange.
According to a blog posted about the upcoming Fedora 11 release, code named “Leonidas,” OpenChange is the first open source implementation of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI). The interoperability with Exchange is also enbaled by incorporation of some portions of the next generation Samba 4 platform.
It’s a pretty big deal, and here’s why:
“The OpenChange implementation provides a client-side library which can be used in existing messaging clients to offer native compatibility with Exchange,” according to a Red Hat blog recently posted on the company web site. “Using the “libmapi” library, OpenChange allows clients such as Thunderbird, Evolution, KMail, and other open source applications to utilize the full range of MAPI functionality including messaging, shared calendars, contact databases, public folders, notes and tasks.”
Fedora 11 offers a host of other new significant features including support for the Ext4 file system by default. To see complete list, go to fedoraproject.org.
May 31st, 2009
SugarCRM, SourceFire, Compiere upgrades almost ready to roll
As the month of May closed, a number of top open source application vendors announced beta releases and forthcoming upgrades.
These include open source CRM, security and ERP vendors.
SugarCRM, of Cupertino, Calif., announced the beta release of version 5.5 of its namesake open source CRM package. The forthcoming upgrade will offer advanced mobile, collaboration and web services. Version 5.5 , which is expected to ship this summer, offers a new mobile studio that allows enhanced customization of SugarCRM for mobile devices and new dynamic teams capabilities that allows end users to easily add individuals or teams to a specific CRM record to allow for better collaboration on solutions.
The enhanced web services framework in version 5.5 improves performance of and the integration of applications into CRM applications. The upgrade will also feature a REST interface and easier REST services development, which enables complex interactions between the CRM system and e-commerce systems, billing services and social networks, the company said. Version 5.5 will also offer a new themes frameworkand advanced password management.
SourceFire, which oversees development on the Snort open source intrusion detection and prevention engine, announced last week the release candidate of Snort 2.8.5 as well as plans to deliver virtual security appliances and cooperate with Intel on next gen Snort technology, the company announced. SourceFire said Snort 2.8.5, available for preview at http://snort.org/downloads, will offer:
Policy-per-VLAN functionality, so administrators can apply different security policies to distinct traffic sets.
Rate-based attack prevention, for blocking potentially malicious network communications.
Improved handling of SSH traffic.
Meanwhile, open source ERP player Compiere launched last week a manufacturing module for its open source ERP solution that can be deployed on permise or in the cloud. Compiere Manufacturing can be customized without programming and will offer advanced cost management and analysis and reporting tools to improve production costs. The Compiere Manufacturing module will be available starting June 15, the Redwood Shores, Calif. company said
May 26th, 2009
Mozilla: Firefox 3.5 RC1 ready to roll in 48 hours
Firefox 3.5 is getting closer to completion.
On Tuesday, the development leader on the project said release candidate 1 will b e good to go in two days.
“Right now, the estimate is 48 hours,” said Mozilla Firefox team lead Mike Beltzner, noting during a meeting today that the number of blockers has hovered at about 10 over the past five days.
Once those remaining issues are ironed out, the code will be shipped off to quality assurance before public release. “Build and QA are … ready to roll,” the team’s meeting notes say.
RC1 will be a significant milestone for Mozilla. It was originally slated to be a minor update to Firefox 3.0 and due by the end of 2008 but was scaled up to a version 3.5 upgrade after Google’s rival open source Chrome browser surprised many when it hit the market last September.
It’s been a longer than expected haul to Firefox 3.5’s release. Leaders said the code would ship in late 2008 or early 2009 — even with the additional features such as private browsing included.
It’s almost here, and it appears just in time: Google’s Chrome 2.0 shipped last week.
January 23rd, 2009
Citrix, Intel developing open source Xen desktop hypervisor
Citrix’s promised Xen-based desktop virtualization solution will be delivered in the second half of 2009.
Earlier this week, the Ft Lauderdale virtualization company announced that it is co-developing the solution, known as “Project Independence,” in collaboration with Intel, one of the original investors in the Xen open source project.
The planned desktop solution, which will be optimized for Intel’s Core 2 desktops and Centrino 2 laptops with vPro, features a local hypervisor that will better support mobile and offline use. Current server-based VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) solutions stream desktop content to thin clients that must always be connected to the network.
With a full desktop virtualization, business consumers can carve up their PC to support different environments, such as corporate and home personalities.
It also delivers support for offline mobility, which is greatly demanded by enterprise customers but cannot be fulfilled by server-based solutions. “You can disconnect from the network and still access that corporate desktop and make sure that all of the hardware features including high definition audio is possible. Doing that in VDI is much harder,” one Citrix exec said, noting that end users don’t have as much bandwidth from network solutions as they do from inside the CPU in their PC.”A solution like this hasn’t existed to this point. ”
The desktop virtualization solution, for example, will offers the same benefit of centralized desktop management and fast application deployment as server-based solutions while extending to end users a rich PC client experience.
Ian Pratt, the founder of the Xen project, said the solution combined with Intel technology will give end users the same bare metal performance on their PC as they currently enjoy.
The dynamic desktop assembly platform allows enterprise customers to package up applications securely, deploy the appliances quickly and manage them as well as desktops are managed using VDI, they say.
The solution is based on technology Citrix acquired when it bought XenSource and Ardence, a streaming solutions company in Waltham, Mass.
January 20th, 2009
Microsoft, Moonlight reach across aisle to bring Obama inauguration to Linux desktops
Looks like the spirit of bipartisan cooperation in D.C. has already left its mark on the PC.
Last night, we’re told, Microsoft worked together with Novell-sponsored Mono Project and Moonlight team to enable Linux desktop users to view the inauguration events using the open source implementation of Silverlight.
Silverlight is Microsoft’s browser plug-in and was selected by the presidential inauguration committee to broadcast today’s inauguration events over the Internet. But it only supports Windows and Macintosh, and that caused some in the Linux community to cry foul.
Moonlight, the open source project working on an implementation of Silverlight for Linux, is still in beta. Yesterday, after protesters posted irate comments on Slash.com, we posted our own blog about the dispute. In it, Moonlight chief and Novell vp Miguel de Icaza indicated that the open source version wasn’t quite ready for the inauguration.
But it looks like Microsoft — or Novell — reached across the aisle to get the matter resolved. de Icaza posted his cheerful update today. Proprietary Microsoft and Linux backer Novell promote two different operating systems yet have collaborated in the past to enable interoperability. Why not on this?
A Novell spokeswoman sent this note to this ZDNet blogger:
“With millions of people flooding the streets of the Capital and temps expected to be in the low teens today in D.C, one of the best places to see the historic swearing in ceremony may be right in front of your computer. Thanks to the Moonlight team working late into the night last night with Microsoft to offer an open source implementation of Silverlight, Linux and Power PC Mac users will also be able view today’s inauguration event streaming online,” she wrote.
Wow, talk about a new era. Microsoft has worked hard as of late to prove it is serious about interoperability with Linux and supporting open source projects. Let’s hope it continues through this presidential term.
Sorry to say I got this note too late to try it out myself . I was busy watching the events on TV, the legacy broadcast device that it is.
January 19th, 2009
Some Linux backers upset about selection of Silverlight to stream Obama inauguration events
While Microsoft cheers the selection of Silverlight for streaming the Obama inauguration events this week, some are upset that the Linux desktop is not a supported operating system.
Microsoft’s cross platform Silverlight browser plug in supports Windows and Macintosh. The Mono project’s Moonlight 1.0 — an implementation of Silverlight for the Linux desktop, and the only open source version — is in beta testing but the final code won’t be released for several weeks. Moonlight 2.0, which incorporates many of the Silverlight 2.0 featutes, won’t be out until late 2009.
Mono project chief and Novell vice president Miguel de Icaza said there might be a workaround — but it’s not certain.
“I tried looking up the player on the Obama web site, and I guess the player has not been made public so I have no way of testing. The streaming and media codecs should be compatible with Moonlight 1.0, but the “chrome” used to paint the player might be a 2.0 app,” de Icaza wrote in an email response to ZDnet blogger questions. “If people compile Moonlight from SVN, they can get our 2.0 support that might be enough to work with this, but we have not officially released that yet.”
Microsoft touts its Silverlight as an open source offering — the source code is available on CodePlex — but the license under which it is distributed is not open source.
One very upset open source backer posted his view on Slashdot over the weekend, and criticized the Presidential Inauguration Committee for not being inclusive.
As there is no working Silverlight 2 capable alternative on these systems, everyone running Mac PPC, Linux and FreeBSD has been left out,” the Slashdot reader wrote. “Should the president of USA use [and/or] sponsor a convicted [monopolist's] not-so-popular plug-in instead of popular and/or free technologies?”
January 15th, 2009
Firefox 3.1 beta 3 now due Feb 2
The delivery of Firefox 3.1 beta 3 has slipped a week to Feb 2.
The final beta for the .1 update was expected to ship Jan 26.
“Due to the large number of outstanding P1 blockers, we are declaring a code slip,” the developers’ meeting notes declared Wednesday after the weekly meeting.
The code freeze was expected on Jan 13. But Mozilla developers saw a delay coming. At last week’s meeting, the crew decided that the nuber of P1 blockers was still substantial and one developer hinted that it coud be delayed by as much as three weeks.
In light of that, this week’s update — a slip of only a week — is optimistic. Now, the code will freeze on January 25 and QA begins on January 27.
Guess it wa a good idea to do a beta 3 after all, huh?
January 9th, 2009
Firefox team stops collecting data to ensure user privacy
The Firefox team decided this week to stop collecting unique identifiers that link crash reports from the same user.
During the somewhat heated debate during an extended session of its weekly meeting, opponents said the practice violates user privacy, while proponents say having the data visible could help them fix bugs and solve bottlenecks faster — even though they claim to have never used it before.
Opponents won the debate by arguing that user privacy trumps any development issue. After the meeting, engineering chief Mike Beltzner summed up the issue this way:
“The discussion at the end of the meeting was around what data we should and shouldn’t be collecting with crash reports, whether or not that data becomes publicly visible on our Crash Reporter developer website,” Beltzner wrote in response to questions submitted by ZDNet. “The questions in the discussion centered around the value in keeping unique identifiers that allow us to associate two crashes from the same user.
“While there is value in being able to do this easily, the potential cost to user privacy felt high, and so some were arguing that we shouldn’t have the crash reporter client on user’s machines send these unique identifiers,” he wrote. “That argument prevailed, and the change will be made such that unique identifiers will no longer be sent. We’ll also purge the database of the ones we’ve collected (but not actually even used) to date and instead find new ways of drawing the correlations required for data analysis which don’t have as high a risk to user privacy.”
January 8th, 2009
Firefox 3.1 beta 3 code freeze slated for Jan 13 -- maybe
The code freeze for the third beta of Firefox 3.1 is scheduled for next Tuesday but could slip if Javascript bugs are not resolved soon.
During the team’s weekly meeting, developer Rob Sayre flagged the Javascript engine blockers as a potential risk to the planned code freeze date of January 13th. He did not know exactly how long it will take to fix the remaining issues and is expected to provide a better estimate soon. Still, he said the existing blockers could push it back anywhere up to three weeks.
Contacted after the meeting, Mozilla engineering chief Mike Beltzner said there is no “declared” slip for the schedule of Firefox 3.1 beta 3 but acknowledged the concerns raised by the developer. “If that estimate puts the code freeze date at risk, we’ll make the appropriate announcements in the Mozilla developer planning newsgroups,” Beltzner told this ZDNet blogger.
Beta 3 is scheduled for release on January 26.
Beta 2 — with private browsing included — was delivered on December 8. The Mozilla team opted to go to a Beta 3 beta cycle rather than a release candidate last month to ensure that users had enough time to test this new feature.
According to Firefox team estimates, there are currently about 300,000 beta testers of Beta 2.
January 5th, 2009
Gartner doles out sobering predictions for open source use in the enterprise for next 5 years
The economic slowdown should benefit open source software but whether open source software will benefit its owners is up in the air.
That’s according to Gartner Group predictions for 2009, which claims that over the next few years most enterprises using open source won’t manage those assets correctly and most won’t achieve any cost savings over proprietary software.
I’m late to the game here, but it’s worth pointing out two findings in the Gartner Predicts 2009 report, which was published early last month:
Through the end of 2011, fewer than 50 percent of global IT organizations will have implemented a formal open source adoption and management policy.
And for the next five years, only about 50 percent of all mainstream IT projects using open source software will not achieve cost savings over closed source alternatives, according to the report’s author, Mark Driver.
The data serves as good warning for enterprise IT managers and CIOs, especially those who have stuck their necks out to support open source.
Gartner’s advise? In order to get a payoff, “move aggressively” to develop an open source adoption strategy and bring OSS and hardware under asset management systems.
“Do not expect to automatically save money with OSS or any technology without effective financial management,” Driver writes. “Do expect to carefully manage open source solutions in the appropriate scenarios to realize total cost of ownership advantages. ”
Imagine sitting down with your CEO in 2015 and explaining why the supposed cost savings of OSS never materialized with all of the energy and bucks put behind it?
Consolidation will vastly reduce the number of open source partners with whom customers do business.
Gartner predicts, for example, that by 2012, at least 50 percent of all direct commercial sales from open source products will come from projects under a single vendor’s patronage. Think about Red Hat, which scooped up JBoss. Think of Sun, which acquired mySQL? What’s in store for 2009?
On a good note, this may spread the use of open source (one throat to choke) and reduce the number of vendor relationships customers must support. But on the other hand, it may amass power into too few hands.
There was some good news in this otherwise sobering report.
Through 2013, 90 percent of all cloud computing providers will rely on open source software to deliver products and services. this will no doubt stimulate more OSS sales and widespread use.
Gartner advises IT managers to manage their cloud and open source strategies together to maximize the potential of each. Tap into the ability of open source software to move workloads to the cloud, Driver also recommends in his to-do list for IT managers.
January 1st, 2009
The biggest threat to open source in 2009
Security and updates, which are often the same thing.
There is no longer any doubt that hackers and malware writers are going after open source projects as they once went after Windows. Vulnerabilities are being found, discovered, created, exchanged.
The best protection against vulnerabilities is to keep software updated, but most open source lacks update services. That’s one part of the Windows license that is worth paying for, and there does not seem to be an open source equivalent.
An exception is Firefox (above, from SecurityMike). But how many take advantage of this? And how tied is Firefox to updating for security purposes? Remember we’re talking about pushing updates, not asking users to pull them.
In any case, the enterprise market is more important here. Servers hold more secrets than clients.
Palamida is trying to build a model for supporting updates, as I described in November. Such a service could, if executed correctly, even give many open source projects a valid business model.
But until this ramps up (hopefully in a competitive market), enterprise managers have an easy way to say “no” to open source.
Regardless of how dangerous this is, the fact that managers feel it’s dangerous makes it so.
This may be the first challenge to open source’s growth in the enterprise since that growth began, and for some it may prove intractable.
There is a way forward, using the enterprise business model, but how many projects will be able to exploit it in a professional way and retain their enterprise credibility remains open to question.
It’s a story I’ll be watching closely as the year unfolds, and I suggest you do the same.
December 30th, 2008
Will open source be lost in clouds in 2009?
Hard times make for hard choices.
The loss of control implied by cloud computing, which may have been inconceivable in 2008, may become much more appealing in 2009.
(My son took this picture on a hiking trip in the Smokies this summer. So credit John F. Blankenhorn.)
The Yankee Group sent over an e-mail recently predicting this will take the form of desktop virtualization.
Mass workforce consolidations as a result of
the economic downturn, especially in the financial services market, will force enterprises to look for ways to provision vast amounts of desktops to absorbed workforces in a fast, cheap and secure manner.
I, for one, welcome our new virtual overlords. The best way to make sure the new minions are on the same page is to push the pages to them. They’re easier to pull back when you later push the people out the door.
Open source is seen as very very good in the cloud, and the cloud is seen as being very very good to open source. It’s really an extension of the enterprise market, where professionals see the value in writing checks so they can play grill the coder.
So how much of the market will cloud computing take in 2009? And how much of the cloud will be on open source?
December 30th, 2008
2009 and the open source rollup
As a business reporter for 30 years I have made a detailed study of rollups. They come in all types:
- The buy-out rollup, as in Bernie Ebbers’ MCI. They started as a tiny long distance operator in Mississippi, LDDS, then bought everyone else out and sought monopoly profits.
- The organic rollup, as in WalMart (right) or any big box retailer you care to name. Kill your competitors with low, low prices, rinse, repeat.
- The conceptual rollup, a favorite of high tech. Think the PC in the 1980s, or the Internet in the 1990s.
Open source has all the markings of this last type of rollup. In 2009 that theory will be tested in the toughest markets.
- In mobile, where phone monopolies act as gatekeepers and decide what will or won’t run on the network.
- In gaming, where console makers act as gatekeepers and demand the same control.
- In laptops, where the Windows monopoly still holds sway and the main alternative is the Macintosh.
When I took on this blog in 2005 open source was mainly a server phenomenon. I wrote at length about BPM and ERP, about CRM and SQL. Those niches remain and competition with Oracle remains fierce. But the market has moved on.
Now Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin says Linux will sweep the laptop market, that it’s going to dominate mobility. Few are laughing at him.
Open source is a conceptual rollup because the concepts behind it are irresistible. Sharing development costs, making code visible, trying before buying (or trying without buying) all make perfect sense in a friction-free online world.
Now, can anyone make money at it? For me that is the big question of 2009. Show me the money, someone.
December 29th, 2008
The HTML standards process grinds on
Back in January I wrote that HTML 5 would prove one of the big stories of 2008.
You agreed and made it the 6th most popular post at this blog for 2008.
Maybe we were both wrong. As I write this in December HTML 5 seems no closer to implementation than it was in January.
This is not an overt criticism of the W3C. I suspect this is in the nature of the standards-making process.
There is a Moore’s Second Law effect at work here. As standards become more complex they take more time to coalesce. And as with other Moore’s Law artifacts this also tends to move geometrically, not arithmetically.
The same effect helps explain the motives behind the development of enterprise open source.
As software gets more complex it takes more time to write and debug. But the value the marketplace puts on the improvements does not rise correspondingly. Not forever at any rate.
If the value of software kept growing in relation to its costs we might be paying $1 million per copy for Windows, not a few hundred dollars. Open source makes this manageable by allowing the costs to be shared, as at Eclipse or Apache.
Standards seem to work similarly. Just the cover of the standards-writing document for HTML5 is daunting. Is this code or another O.J. trial? (Rimshot.)
What seems clear in going over the contents is that, assuming it’s ever implemented, HTML5 will be as different from current Web standards as IPv6 is from IPv4.
There is a warning in the preceding. IPv6 is still not fully implemented nearly a decade after being approved. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen here.
December 27th, 2008
The Internet is the tree, open source the fruit
One of the big journalistic trends of 2008 was to call every new Internet paradigm open source.
Blogging was open source journalism. Social networks were open source crowdsourcing.
This was both a compliment and a warning.
Even journalists who wouldn’t know a Linux penguin from a Disney one (above) were giving open source its props. But as with e a decade ago (and perhaps i today) it’s the sign of a market top.
The fact is that open source, as well as the e and the i, are all fruit of the same tree, which is the Internet.
The Internet zeroes out distribution costs and nearly does the same to marketing costs. Any product or process that can be reduced to digital bits becomes subject to this economic process.
In many fields, journalism being one, the result is wrenching, more destruction than creative. In software, however, it has opened up many new opportunities for profit.
Many of those opportunities are given the software industry, but not all of them. People and companies of all sizes benefit from free code. They also benefit from being able to see and edit the code.
Open source, in terms of its work in developing new business models, may be the harbinger of many great fortunes to come in many fields.
Just remember that open source is still the fruit in this game. The Internet is the tree. Nurture and grow it if you want open source to prosper in 2009.
December 25th, 2008
Open source business models must be voluntary
Entrepreneur Dave Rosenberg has a Christmas wish for you.
(This is the first cat my wife and I owned. Mouse over to get the name for this Cat of Christmas past.)
Dave wants to make everyone pay for open source in 2009.
Money is the fuel that keeps things going. Entrepreneurs are in business to make money. It is reasonable for entrepreneurs to dream of getting more money out of people.
But Dave is missing an essential point. In an open source world, business models must be voluntary.
This is the opposite of the way proprietary models work, and thus it’s difficult even today for people to get their minds around it.
Proprietary models are all compulsory. You want the PC, you buy the Microsoft license. You want the anti-viral, you pay for the daily updates. You give me money, I give you value.
What is wrong with this picture? In open source, code is eventually worth nothing. Once a program is out for a time and debugged to a reasonable degree it’s not even a widget.
It’s a cat.
A cat has enormous economic utility but, for the most part, no economic value. Kibble is very cheap, and if the cat goes outside you don’t need litter either.
So what is necessary for getting and maintaining open source code is the equivalent of kibble. The cat earns its kibble by showing its owner love. Smart open source communities do the same thing.
If you want to build new code, of course, you need more than kibble. You need capital. Capital requires a business model. Business models don’t run on kibble, but the promise of a high return.
Still, the business model you choose must be voluntary. It must not be compulsory, because people are free to just go online and get an acceptable alternative at little or no cost.
The difficulty of this, the need to constantly innovate not just in terms of code but in terms of business models, dawned on many in this space over the last year.
As I said at the top, it is reasonable that an entrepreneur would wish this not be so. But you don’t build businesses on wishes. You build them by creating value people are glad to pay for.
This is what I will be looking for in 2009, value that makes me want to open my wallet. The days of compulsion in software business models are over. Build other dreams, and better.
December 25th, 2008
When bandwidth is free
If you haven’t heard this already it bears repeating. (Picture from the University of Rochester.)
Internet bandwidth is essential infrastructure.
Like freeway lanes, like sea and airports, the quality and price of your Internet bandwidth determines how much it costs to do intellectual business with you.
Open source and open spectrum are incompatible with monopoly gatekeepers. They create unnecessary economic friction. They make American intellectual goods increasingly non-competitive at a time they must become more competitive.
For a decade America has been stuck in what is increasingly the Internet slow lane.
Government-granted monopolies have allowed the Bellheads and cable head-ends to violate Moore’s Law, taking all improvements for themselves and hiking the price of bits to you.
The response to that by the market has been software, programs like LibTorrent, and applications using it like Miro. My January piece on the two was the 7th most popular blog post here for 2008.
In retrospect my praise was premature. The monopolists had another card up their sleeve, one they have now played. Bit caps.
By strictly limiting the number of bits you can transfer on your “unlimited” plans, the monopolists have made it plain to all that their agenda is to limit economic growth and demand rents from all 21st century economic activity.
OPEC has nothing on AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.
What was, at the start of this decade, a way to eliminate economic gatekeepers in intellectual activity has become, today, the equivalent of an early 19th century turnpike or canal monopoly.
These concessions, and later concessions given railroad companies, were necessary in order to construct what was deemed essential infrastructure.
Without government support such projects as the Erie Canal and the Transcontinental Railroad would not have been built when they were.
The Internet must not be subject to such economics. It costs less-and-less to move bits about, in fact, every year, as transceivers and radios improve. Those improvements are being denied the public, and the economy.
Monopolists have, so far, convinced people in both parties that they are essential to the maintenance of the Internet. They are not. The Internet was a network-of-networks from the beginning, and must become one again.
Let 2009 begin the task of breaking this monopoly, of freeing the bits, and of getting economic growth going again.
December 24th, 2008
Eliminate the FCC?
Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, father of the Creative Commons license and author of the classic Code is Law, has a modest proposal to help open source and open spectrum make progress in the Obama Administration.
Newsweek’s headline writers call it a “reboot” but Lessig is clear.
You can’t fix DNA. You have to bury it. President Obama should get Congress to shut down the FCC and similar vestigial regulators, which put stability and special interests above the public good.
I have written against the FCC here in the past, but they merely ran the spectrum auctions that made government co-conspirators in the AT&T-Verizon monopoly program. The spy programs that were the quid pro quo were run out of Justice.
They didn’t start the fire. They were just the firemen who looked after the fire.
Much of Lessig’s piece is a jeremiad against monopolies, which are under the Federal Trade Commission as well as Justice. His real goal is the creation of an innovation EPA (iEPA), a new agency tasked with reducing roadblocks to innovation.
That’s the problem. Any government institution can be corrupted, any set of safeguards overrun with time and money. There are plenty of existing positions and agencies from which science might find ascendency, starting with the science adviser.
I am not certain we need to always build government while we’re tearing parts down in the name of reform. Some parts of the FCC’s mandate (assuring against spectrum interference) are also necessary. They could be moved to other (smaller) offices.
Critics will claim Lessig is merely seeking the appointment of an “innovation czar” and applying for the position. Again, a good man can always be replaced by a worse one. A President McCain might have put Carly Fiorina in this job.
Open source is thus left with its constant choices. You can put your faith in men, you can put your faith in institutions, or you can put your faith in laws, and those who serve the law.
What say you? Which offers innovation its best protection?
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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