[Sigia-l] The future of WWW...

[Listera]

Dave:
> I have not seen any real advantages to an open system thus far.

Geez, Dave, how can you even say that! Do you think we would have the
Internet that we have today (web/email/web services/etc) if it weren't for
the openness of the protocols that run it? Would we have the TV industry
that we have today if NTSC was a property of, say, Ampex or RCA?

Even MS didn't think so. I don't know if you remember this but MS, as usual,
did have an alternative to HTML/HTTP/Web called Internet Studio, with a
proprietary Blackbird format. It was abandoned by 1996.

> Obviously, they are helping others, but one could say that companies like IBM
> are just grasping at straws b/c our gov'ts refuse to deal w/ the monopoly.

IBM sells complexity.
  
>>> What if, the web is ready to die as we know it
>> Are there any signs of it?
> ... there are none

So you agree MS is trying to kill what's nowhere ready to ready to die,
because they think they can?

> A dismantling of the browser so that networked-based applications can have
> their own client infrastructure.

You are right about this: In the next decade we're poised to see if people
will prefer to have dozen different RIAs to reach dozen disparate sources of
data/info or one universal browser.

There were/are absolutely no technical impediments that could have prevented
MS from building a browser, with the entire widget set and UI
functionalities Windows OS was capable of, with security, persistence and
the rest of the enchilada thrown in for good measure. MS *chose* not to. I
could speculate as to why.

> Think of the CD issues. The large corps just came together and said if we are
> all going to succeed we are going to license this from SONY and deal w/ it.

Since in another life I introduced CD-ROM to the US, a couple of
corrections: it was a Sony-Phillips joint affair and the standard became the
"standard" only after a standards war. Because...

> Now that the patent is over

...the "standard" war for the next generation of DVDs just started.

> Why can't software work the same way?

In many ways, it does.

> Let someone win for 20 years and then patent laws allow for a free for all
> shortly there after. ;)

Very few technologies would last for 20 years to begin with.
 
> Anything than the mess we have now. W3C solutions are not good enough
> ... IE solutions are too proprietary. OSS solutions are a mess ... So
> now what? Better is as better does, so to speak so lets get over the
> Monopoly phobia and deal w/ teh fact that MS won, we all lost but lets
> move on.

Because the tech industry lives and dies on innovation. What you are asking
for is a recipe for stagnation. We know this empirically from the histories
of IBM, AT&T and MS. Just look at IE. :-) Do you really think you'd have C#
today if it weren't for the competition from Java?
 
Why would any sane company on this planet help MS calcify a monopoly when MS
can bundle them out of existence in a second, if that company had an
alternative?
  
> The PC, the Internet, and Web, etc. are way too hard for people to use

If you think the web browser is hard to use now, wait till you get gazillion
different RIAs each doing its own UI in its own peculiar way! There was a
time pretty much each Windows app had its own printing UI/procedure.
 
> If someone could come up w/ a viable solution other than giving up and
> letting the alpha male control all (in lieu of a gov't w/ a backbone
> to stand up against them) please let me know.

The ONLY alternative is to allow competition to produce a solution. Letting
a monopolist convicted time after time as an abuser to control the
marketplace and profit from the work of others is not only morally bankrupt,
even more crucial, it's technically suboptimal.

For example, if MS could set, say, browser plugin standards or email clients
we might all be relegated to ActiveX or Outlook security hellholes, thank
you very much.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba