4 ms·

It's, ironically, a case of the "embrace and extinguish" philosophy that Microsoft was reviled for. I remember reading posts by several people which said they

It's, ironically, a case of the "embrace and extinguish" philosophy that Microsoft was reviled for. I remember reading posts by several people which said they weren't going to build a RSS reader because they didn't want to compete with Google Reader.. and then they went ahead and killed it. RSS didn't really "take off" with mainstream users (I guess today's equivalent is Twitter), but it filled an interesting niche. RSS -> Twitter Usenet -> many proprietary platforms IRC -> Slack XMPP never took off Many open, interoperable services died off or never took off, but companies built similar services and are enjoying success.

bitwize 11y ago
As a distributed platform, the internet has failed. The solution is to rebuild the OS and network from the ground up: http//www.urbit.org /s
- woah 11y ago
  Urbit looks cool, but it will not magically make things distributed. What causes centralization are business factors. It's just a lot easier to build a great product if you have a revenue source, which is most easily acquired if you can lock people into paying for your proprietary thing. Also, it's a lot easier to make good protocol decisions if you don't have to get them published into a standard and deal with the beauracracy etc. If you look at the level of polish in slack vs one of the many previous open source irc clients, the difference is clear. It helps to have money.
- tvararu 11y ago
  I cackled and spat on my screen when I read the /s, well played.
pmlnr 11y ago
"Some of these parallels are obvious, and even more or less literal: Gmail is IMAP and SMTP, and Google Talk is (or was) XMPP, all on port 80 in the same browser window. Others are more metaphorical. Twitter is IRC on port 80, although one primarily listens to users instead of channels — but listening to channels is still possible, if one uses a client that can follow hashtags, and the syntax is even the same. Dropbox is FTP on port 80. Reddit is Usenet on port 80." https://medium.com/@maradydd/on-port-80-d8d6d3443d9a https://medium.com/@maradydd/on-port-80-d8d6d3443d9a
- GFischer 11y ago
  Good article, it makes the point I was trying to make better than I did.

bitwize 11y ago

As a distributed platform, the internet has failed. The solution is to rebuild the OS and network from the ground up: http//www.urbit.org /s

woah 11y ago
Urbit looks cool, but it will not magically make things distributed. What causes centralization are business factors. It's just a lot easier to build a great product if you have a revenue source, which is most easily acquired if you can lock people into paying for your proprietary thing. Also, it's a lot easier to make good protocol decisions if you don't have to get them published into a standard and deal with the beauracracy etc. If you look at the level of polish in slack vs one of the many previous open source irc clients, the difference is clear. It helps to have money.
tvararu 11y ago
I cackled and spat on my screen when I read the /s, well played.

pmlnr 11y ago

"Some of these parallels are obvious, and even more or less literal: Gmail is IMAP and SMTP, and Google Talk is (or was) XMPP, all on port 80 in the same browser window. Others are more metaphorical. Twitter is IRC on port 80, although one primarily listens to users instead of channels — but listening to channels is still possible, if one uses a client that can follow hashtags, and the syntax is even the same. Dropbox is FTP on port 80. Reddit is Usenet on port 80." https://medium.com/@maradydd/on-port-80-d8d6d3443d9a https://medium.com/@maradydd/on-port-80-d8d6d3443d9a

GFischer 11y ago
Good article, it makes the point I was trying to make better than I did.