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> Open protocols, or non profit open source projects will > never compete with true entrepreneurship and hardcore > entrepreneurs creating products. Ngin

> Open protocols, or non profit open source projects will > never compete with true entrepreneurship and hardcore > entrepreneurs creating products. Nginx and Apache httpd are, in that order, the most used web servers. Both are FOSS, and both serve HTTP, an open protocol. There were definitely attempts to build proprietary protocols, none of which were successful, and in the long run the proprietary web servers ended up second place to the open source projects. Here in the US, I get reminders via SMS from my bank or my doctor telling me that payments went through or that I have an upcoming appointment. More thorough messages are sent via Email. Every form I've filled out since the turn of the millennium asks for my email address, none of them have asked for my MySpace, Twitter, or Facebook handles. I edit my code in either Emacs, Vim, or Visual Studio Code -- one of those is an open-source product by a very much for-profit company, the other two have survived decades as powerful editors/IDEs. If I had to make a prediction, I'd say that over time open protocols will end up winning -- not because of some kind of ideological purity, but because they permit people to build platforms that interoperate with one another. The Fediverse is young yet, and Twitter/Instagram/FB are making adversarial interoperability hard, but the entire history of the Internet and the World Wide Web is one where open has won over the long haul.

haolez 6y ago
Entrepreneurship is not about putting a price tag on everything and making closed proprietary stuff. It's about making a profitable business using the tools at your disposal, which might even be open source (like in the "open core" business model). It may be part of your strategy to open source your product, as many do.
blippage 6y ago
> If I had to make a prediction, I'd say that over time open protocols will end up winning I think Alan Kay made a prediction to that effect a few years ago, so you're in good company. I certainly hope you're both right. Patience is required, though. I imagine it's something of a cycle. Companies try to lock users into their ecosystem, but there are opposing forces that want the protocols to be free. I certainly hope that the internet of the future looks a lot different than its current form. We regularly hear of data breaches; something that people take in their stride. When will people wake up that the current model is not a good one? I don't know. It's not certain that they will, but my sense is that current practises are not sustainable long term. We now have "IoT" devices that are beholden to company servers. That's utter insanity, in my books. Will we wake up to the fact that it is a deeply flawed idea?

haolez 6y ago

Entrepreneurship is not about putting a price tag on everything and making closed proprietary stuff. It's about making a profitable business using the tools at your disposal, which might even be open source (like in the "open core" business model). It may be part of your strategy to open source your product, as many do.

blippage 6y ago

> If I had to make a prediction, I'd say that over time open protocols will end up winning I think Alan Kay made a prediction to that effect a few years ago, so you're in good company. I certainly hope you're both right. Patience is required, though. I imagine it's something of a cycle. Companies try to lock users into their ecosystem, but there are opposing forces that want the protocols to be free. I certainly hope that the internet of the future looks a lot different than its current form. We regularly hear of data breaches; something that people take in their stride. When will people wake up that the current model is not a good one? I don't know. It's not certain that they will, but my sense is that current practises are not sustainable long term. We now have "IoT" devices that are beholden to company servers. That's utter insanity, in my books. Will we wake up to the fact that it is a deeply flawed idea?