From: Koen Holtman (Koen.Holtman@cern.ch)
Date: Mon May 01 2000 - 12:23:57 PDT
Just to inject my personal theory here.
On Mon, 1 May 2000, Rohit Khare wrote:
> http://www.reed.com/Papers/endofendtoend.html
>
[...]
> What's changed? Was the end-to-end argument wrong?
>
> I don't think so.
>
> What we are seeing now is the same debate we had back in the months leading
> up to that day in Marina del Rey.
I believe that the current end-to-end debate is less about engineering
efficiency than it is about lock-in and control. Put it differently: if
one end (the user machine) is locked in by a big software monopoly, and
the other ends (popular content sites) by big media conglomerates, where
are all the other guys looking to inflate their stockmarket value supposed
to go to innovate?
My personal answer is: go invent new stuff for the ends. The middle is
good enough as it is already, and I like it transparent, so keep away from
it.
But you can't really blame people too much for trying to innovate in the
middle. It is just one of these synthetic evils that you have to live
with.
Koen.
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