"Is the valley not are the forefront any more? Is innovation in the valley being stifled by attempts to control IP? " No, I don't think SV is "The forefront",

"Is the valley not are the forefront any more? Is innovation in the valley being stifled by attempts to control IP? " No, I don't think SV is "The forefront", but it remains one of the forefronts, simply because of the remnant culture and money flow. That being said, I do think it has stagnated mostly do to your rightly referenced attempts to control IP. What I am seeing is that many of the companies the best poised for the future are those that are fully embracing FOSS but have learned how to adapt a business model to still profit while supporting that FOSS. Otherwise you end up with a company trying to go Apple and fork something open and then shove the user into a prison. My observation is that businesses have only put up with this because the companies that did it tended to offer support as a prereq for prison sentencing, and companies love support as a backup. As more FOSS friendly companies move away from user-prisons and towards user-freedom but pay us for support if you are a business model, I think more and more the old guards in the industry are headed for a shake up. I don't work in SV but I have friends who do, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Regarding the origins of SV, the talks he gives are very interesting variations on the war refinement produces enhancements in tech line of thinking, which I think will continue to be relatively true. Follow the war money to find out where innovation is going on. For example, the last time I talked to Mudge he was really stoked about all the stuff DARPA was doing, and with programs like cyber-fast track, I think less and less of that money is geographically limited to a single center of innovation like SV.