Slashdot Mirror
Lost In the Cloud
Colonel Korn writes "Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain suggests in an Op-Ed piece that the seemingly inevitable move toward the often locked-down cloud is stifling innovation and threatening our privacy: '... many software developers who once would have been writing whatever they wanted for PCs are simply developing less adventurous, less subversive, less game-changing code under the watchful eyes of Facebook and Apple. If the market settles into a handful of gated cloud communities whose proprietors control the availability of new code, the time may come to ensure that their platforms do not discriminate. Such a demand could take many forms, from an outright regulatory requirement to a more subtle set of incentives — tax breaks or liability relief — that nudge companies to maintain the kind of openness that earlier allowed them a level playing field on which they could lure users from competing, mighty incumbents. We've only just begun to measure this problem, even as we fly directly into the cloud. That's not a reason to turn around. But we must make sure the cloud does not hinder the creation of revolutionary software that, like the Web itself, can seem esoteric at first but utterly necessary later.'"
Or, you know, developers could still write code that runs on one computer and do whatever they feel like doing.
Somehow, I don't think that Facebook is going to be the technology that drives computing forard...
I'm actually surprised at how quickly some of these platforms like the iPhone have developed completely closed programming environments with barely a peep of protest from the normally pretty libertarian tech crowd. Even on /., there doesn't seem to be much of a stir about it. Every now and then someone complains, or advocates jailbreaking, but I hear more howling when MS proposes to make IE a default browser than when Apple completely locks down an entire product line to outside developers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Its trivial for me to switch from Facebook to any number of different social networks.
Really? Is it trivial to transfer all your uploaded pictures/videos, friend list, and history to your new social network provider? Now is it trivial for you, as a tech enthusiast, or trivial for a normal facebook user? Or did you mean that it is trivial to log into some social networking site other than facebook? Unless your data can follow you, or you're willing to recreate/lose that data, you're locked in.
Services not always easy to switch away from. Switching search engines is one thing, changing your email provider is entirely another. Encouraging data portability and compatibility is not a bad thing, especially when the encouragement is relief for liability incurred by making that data portable.