OSBC2004: Tim O'Reilly on Rethinking the Boundaries of Open Source

Tim O'Reilly is speaking on "Rethinking the Boundaries of Open
Source." Tim starts out talking about the "PC paradigm shift" when
IBM created commodity computing and did away with proprietary
advantage. Perhaps the most important result of this shift was that
power was transfered from hardware to software. This birthed
Microsoft.

We're in a similar paradigm shift today. Tim illustrates this
with his now classic question "how many of you use Linux/how many
of you use Google? The point being the everyone who uses Google
uses Linux. The desktop is no longer the center of the universe.
LAMP is a generic back-end platform that is often used to present a
platform-agnostic front-end. These LAMP applications are being
created by open source developers and run on open source platforms,
but the source code is not distribute (and wouldn't be useful to
many developers if it were). Licenses are triggered by
distribution. The value in these applications is in their data and
their customer interactions, not their software.

Free and open source licensing was invented to keep doing
something old, not to do something new. Source code was
traditionally open and close-source was new. Stallman invented the
GPL as a defensive mechanism to keep the party going. GPL can be
problematic because its too restrictive. Less restrictive licenses
like Apache and BSD licenses work.

Here are some trends that Tim sees:

Commodity software with and open architecture

Information applications are decoupled from both hardware and
software

Competitive advantage and revenue opportunities move "up the
stack" to services above the level of the single device.

Value is based on data and customer relationships, not
proprietary software.

Intel is still inside, but so is Cisco and eventually
others--there's plenty of room at the bottom as well as the
top.

Collaboration, not licensing is the real mother of open source.
One aspect is "the adhocracy," like minded developers can find each
other and self-organize in ever-shifting groups that free associate
to achieve a goal. A second aspect is that software development
teams can be distributed worldwide. Third, power shifts from
companies to individuals because of the increased visibility of the
network---everyone's a free agent. Fourth, users help build the
application.

The first open source revolution happened in the 90's. The
commercial Internet is a direct result of open source and even
public domain software including UUCP, Usenet News, SLIP, DNS,
Bind, Sendmail, Apache, and the WWW. The whole ISP business is
essentially paid access to what used to be free. Right now, we have
basic cable---the commodity components. Where are the premium
channels?

Tim talks about the architecture and participation and Clay
Shirky's three methods of building large collected works: (1) pay
for it (Yahoo!), (2) use volunteers (Wikipedia), or (3) let users
build it as a by-product of their own self-interested actions
(Napster). This last method is used by eBay, Google, and Amazon to
add value to their services.

Engineering reliable systems from independently developed
components may be THE key open source business competency.
Websphere is an example of a mix of proprietary and open source
software. This is analogous to Compaq in the early days of the PC
revolution. Tim asks "who's the Dell of the commodity software
market?