Re: OC Register

From: Stephen D. Williams (sdw@lig.net)
Date: Tue Feb 27 2001 - 09:03:34 PST


kragen@pobox.com wrote:
>
> "Adam L. Beberg" <beberg@mithral.com> writes:
> > > So far Endeavors hasn't licensed its technology, which embeds P2P
> > > software in any machine with access to the Internet and in a Windows
> > > environment.
> >
> > Has anyone? Everyone is too busy trying to lock everyone into their
> > proprietary protocol and namespace because THAT is how you make money.

Only companies in a monopoly position can make that work in the long
run.

> Not *everyone*. People who try to lock everyone into their
> proprietary protocol and namespace will lose, because by doing so,
> they are destroying value for their customers, not creating it. Folks
> with open protocols and namespaces will win in the long run, because
> the value of using the network is proportional to the number of other
> users, and there will eventually be more users of open networks than
> proprietary ones.
>
> This argument got played out in the 1980s with PC hardware; the IBM PC
> won, because it was open. It got played out in the later 1980s with
> minicomputer and workstation OSes; Unix won, because it was
> comparatively open. It got played out in the early 1990s with
> computer networks; the Internet won, crushing all the proprietary
> online services (except for AOL). It got played out in the late 1990s
> with networked hypertext formats; the Web won. It's getting played
> out now with PC and high-end embedded OSes; Linux is winning. And
> it'll get played out again in the P2P software market, or whatever we
> call it next year when we get tired of the "P2P" buzzword.

Ethernet vs. Token Ring
SMTP vs. CCMail, MCI Mail, et al
SMTP vs. X.400/X.500
TCP/IP vs. ISO OSI
HTML vs. 'rich text' (in many forms)
PCI/ISA vs. MicroChannel
SDRAM vs. RDRAM
SNMP vs. ???
Jabber vs. AOL AIM ;-)

>
> > > Kan said P2P will catch on as soon as people get over the notion that
> > > information can only travel in one direction.
> >
> > Did someone suddenly remove all the NATs and firewalls and not tell me? Last
> > I checked the net is becoming MORE one-directional every day.
>
> C'mon, we have GNU httptunnel; we have ssh; we have isochronous HTTP;
> we have IP tunneling over DNS. And more and more things are running
> over HTTP every day. The Net is becoming more two-directional every
> day, because that's what its users want, against the wishes of their
> IT administrators.

sdw

-- 
sdw@lig.net                 sdw@insta.com                
swilliams@Jabber.com
Stephen D. Williams         Insta, Inc./Jabber.Com, Inc./CCI    
http://sdw.st
43392 Wayside Cir,Ashburn,VA 20147-4622 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 
Dec2000



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:18:45 PDT