The Coming "Open Monopoly"

Ramsed writes: "On cnet Petr Hrebejk and Tim Boudreau wrote an article claiming that the current Microsoft Monopoly will be replaced by an 'Open Monopoly'; a monopoly of Open Source. They are explaining why big companies like IBM support this. In their view, it's inevitable this 'Open Monopoly' will win in the end, and that apart from the current monopolist, everyone will be better of, because of lower barriers for participation, software better targeted at its users and lower development costs. Profit should be made with support and consultancy." Update: 10/28 13:42 GMT by J : Little-known fact -- for important stories, slashdot sometimes runs duplicates to see who's still awake on a weekend. Nice work to those of you who caught it. See you next week. *sigh*

Comments

monopoly? how about co-operation?

[callinan]

I kind of dislike the phrase "open-source monopoly", and I don't believe that the total infastructure for the internet (or any other platform) will be totally open source. ALthough the use of OSS will continue to expand, I hope it can co-exist with commercial closed source also. I can't believe all companies will adopt OSS or just fall by the wayside.

No, Microsoft will unfortunately rule onward

[Ars-Fartsica]

The last battleground is the web.

The "open", standards-based web exists largely because Microsoft allows it to exist. With over 90% of desktops under their control, and over 90% of the browser market under its control, Microsoft could at any time move off to a "extended" web (an online service using proprietary protocols), and in fact, we see that already happening.

Recently Microsoft has begun shipping XP, IE6, a new Windows Media Player, and the client libs for .Net.

They have also begun to shun non-IE clients at their web sites.

Why they are doing this should be obvious - soon, MSN sites will start to accesss client code available only on MS platforms. This will truly allow MS to extend what they have embraced.

Of course, can you blame them? HTTP and HTML are useful protocols that have become outdated. The stateless, text-oriented model was extremely useful to get early adoption, but at this point there is no doubt that users of every type of platform are ready to move on to more advanced protocols that offer greater functionality. This is why many websites use SSL now as a way of creating a session of any kind. Unfortunately the HTTP-NG protocol has been shelved - it would have provided a great deal of new functionality that could have moved the web in to the next generation.

So Microsoft is going to get there on their own. You will soon see them exploiting the client libs shipped to 90% of the desktop users out there to radically enhance the browsing experience.

The standards-based web will soon be relegated to a second-class experience, and its our collective fault for not moving more rapidly to create open standards that provide for a better user experience, and get the tools out there to support them.