Towards a Permission-Based Web

On his blog over at RedMonk, analyst James Governor looks at the walled garden we seem to be moving into, and possible cracks in the wall. "As we rush to purchase Apple products and services on Cupertino’s monochrome treadmill of shiny shiny, I can’t help thinking the open web community is losing something vital — a commitment to net neutrality and platform openness. If a single company can decide what plays on the network and what does not, in arbitrary fashion, how can that be net neutrality? ... Is the AppStore a neutral network? Should it be? Is Comcast, the company net neutrality proponents love to hate, really the only company we should be wary of? Pipe level neutrality is surely only one layer of a stack. The wider market always chooses proprietary wrappers — every technology wave is co-opted by a master packager. Success in the IT industry has always been about packaging — doing the best job of packaging technologies as they emerge. Twas ever thus." Governor ends his essay with an optimistic look at Android, which he says "potentially fragments The Permission Based Web, and associated data ownership-based business models."

Comments

ok, here's what you do

[uncanny]

As much of a fan of google as i am, i'm starting to think they are eventually going to be the next giant evil corporation. but for now, imma get a droid!

Re:we care

[Sandbags]

and half the "lockdown" apple enforces is under their contractual obligations to AT&T, the media providers (networks, studios, etc), and to protect the patents and trademarks of their partners.

Apple is extremely open. They frown on overcharing for crap, for scams, and they like to protect their consumers. It's half the reason people CHOOSE them. Their device works, priced vs a blackberry it's cheaper over 2 years, has nice interface software (don;t get me started on Palm...), and you have amazing freedom with the device. It happens to be restricted to AT&T's network, but... oh, wait, is that a Verizon tower my iPone is connected to right now? Why yes, it is!!! Yea, the whole FCC manditory partner network sharing thing... I could give a shit about AT&T's poor netowkr since the device will simply connect to the strongest local 3G tower anyway...

plus, you can allways jailbreak the iPhone. You do have that right (if you're OK saccrificing a warranty).