Markoff on a distributed modular, componentized web
I was wondering how long it would take John Markoff to get up to snuff on what’s up nowadays - and he’s finally done it. Though his article heavily leans towards ‘legitimizing’ everything via what “big companies” do - he does write for the NY Times - so what do you expect?
In his article “Software Out There” Markoff writes……
Despite its promise, however, modular software has generally been limited by corporate strategies that have held customers and other programmers hostage to proprietary systems.
Those limitations have eased almost overnight, mostly because of the open-source software movement, which promotes making information available to everyone.
The shift toward sharing, which in its grandest conception has been termed Web 2.0, has touched off a frenzy of software design and start-up activity not seen since the demise of the dot-com era six years ago.
Amen brother.
Amen brother.But what about open standards?
How is this web supposed to ‘mesh’ itself together without a whole new rash of standards - which will act as the causeways and bridges between the disparate islands of fucntionality? By forming an archipegalo of loosely coupled vendors - we (that’s me and you) will be able to stand up NEXT to the giant behemoths and make a few bucks along the way.
Not everyone can get bought by Yahoo or Google. And there must be SOME reasons why they’re doing all the buying. Get a clue folks - they’re not the only smart folks around. By assembling a core group of components, modules, services and interfaces - the BigCos think they can define the next generation “web OS”.
With what’s left of our industry (the folks who WEREN’T bought), we’ll all be able to stand together and present a comprehensive set of solutions for our endusers - without having the Yahoo or Google brand tatooed on your ass.
And by playing GYMAA off of each other, we’ll be able to get them to support our burgeoning standards - to enable this all to happen! Its like a giant chess game of life. Rook to Queen’s 7 - check.
