In his post Open Source and Cloud Computing, Tim O’Reilly expresses his fear of lock-in with cloud computing. To combat the potential for lock-in he proposes a focus on peer-to-peer, open source, and open standards. Interesting enough, in the end he calls for an open source kernal for his internet operating system.
Despite all the possibilities for lock-in that we see with Web 2.0 and cloud computing, I believe that the benefits of openness and interoperability will eventually prevail, and we’ll see a system made up of cooperating programs that aren’t all owned by the same company, an internet platform, that, like Linux on the commodity PC architecture, is assembled from the work of thousands. Those who are skeptical of the idea of the internet operating system argue that we’re missing the kinds of control layers that characterize a true operating system. I like to remind them that much of the software that is today assembled into a Linux system already existed before Linus wrote the kernel. Like LA, 72 suburbs in search of a city, today’s web is 72 subsystems in search of an operating system kernel. When we finally get that kernel, it had better be open source.
Interesting idea, an operating system kernal for the web. Might that be Croquet? A kernal not just for the web but the metaverse as well. In addition to it being open source as Tim warns, it’s peer-to-peer.
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