Will the next Internet be close or open source?
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Be open and meet your destiny, be closed and you’ll die. That’s in short what Eric Schmidt said in a column paper posted in the Economist. The future is mash-ups, those online services combinations like NetVibes or Meebo. And in this new world, “sophisticated browsers and technologies like LAMP or AJAX—not neon lights or Greek heroes but simple building blocks that enable people to produce and distribute content—are critical.”
Schmidt sure has a ton of arguments to say this. But instead of using open source, it would have been better to stress the rise of open API (application programming interface.) Yahoo has an instant messenger, Yahoo wants developers to beef up its software, Yahoo provides an API. So do Windows Live, Skype. So do Flickr, YouTube, or Amazon. The core engine may be confined in a black box, rely on specific protocols (Skype does it quite well), the results are the same. Most of people don’t really care on its internal mechanism as long as the service is (mostly) free and provides substantial values to users.
We agree with him. In the ‘new world‘, open source applications would prevail a lot more that it does right now. On the Internet, on devices like cellphones. Open source would be everywhere. But the new paradigm is about hybrid applications. Like hybrid cars, combining gas/ethanol and electric engine, applications will mix close and open source bricks. Linux Ubuntu will include proprietary drivers, so what.
Nov 23, 2006 | By Nuno
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