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Can Marc Do it Again?
Someone gave us the link to Marc Andreessen's
latest company effort. He's got a good team, lotsa money, and credibility - and he wants to rule the space of "hosted applications".
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I personally find the concept of downloading apps (per use) quite disturbing, for a couple of reasons:
::chuckles:: (only if they're really good)
a) Why couldn't they charge per use - get people ensnared and then: "Oh whoops! We're sorry, costs are high, we're going to have to institute daily fees."
b) Why couldn't they charge TO use - don't get me wrong, owning software is great, but... giving other people money for it?
c) Bandwith/Net Congestion. Take this example: Day before an essay is due and like usual I haven't started. I go to this page, pop open the app (I assume this is the kind of app they're talking about) and the app takes 20 minutes to load, causing me to loose half my hair.
d) Internet conncetion. My modem isn't all that reliable (good ol' earthlink) and it drops my connection. Would you have to save every 20 seconds so that you don't loose work when you drop off the net?
e) "Haxors" Your arch-rival at school needs no more than to sniff your password and edit a few key phrases. When you print - in a rush, you don't notice them, and you're failed.
Anyways, having to d/l software every time you use it is not my idea of fun. I like software on disks - much easier to replace when the computer barfs.
IMNSHO, hosting apps for users is a waste of bandwidth and time (not to mention the piracy hassles) and hosting 'net apps has been done FOR A WHILE. It should be intresting to see what Marc comes up with.
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
An implicit assumption in the GPL seems to be that users of a program have access to the binary. That's not the case with CGI programs and similar hosted applications. I'm not sure how access to source can be preserved in these cases without resorting to terms like those in the APSL. Any ideas?
(This is a long-standing issue. It's not related to marca's new company but I brought it up in reference to the field of hosted applications in general.)
When will people realize that MS doesn't matter? Anything they do at this point is too little, too late. The future of information technology doesn't have ANY place for them and their current product models. The DOD trial and "Linux competition" aside, in three years it won't matter WHAT Microsoft is doing unless they abandon all their products now, or at least re-work them for the next wave.
Larry Ellison is right: it will be all about weak/cheap clients and beefcake centralized services. There will be one fiber running to everyone's house (provided by companies that look like telcos combined with cable companies) and over that you will access data in any form you want. A "Telephone" in your kitchen, "Television" in the family room, email from your palm-based device (eventually a more appropriate interface: voice or otherwise), and any other sort of data acquisition/modification from other specialized devices.
You'll still have your video game device (the merger of console and pc), and something to write documents on (of course, by that point there'll be little need to make a hardcopy, but the provisions will be there), both consisting of simpler, more usable software stored in firmware, with modular elements loaded from the "Internet." (Which is where the successor to Java steps in... hardware/platform independent software that (by then) will perform well.)
The only possible product have even a niche need is WinCE, which probably won't survive given real competition -- it wasn't developed with the future mindset in consideration. They'll wither away as they try to include more and more features in it, when the world will be moving towards two things: 1. more appropriate interfaces for computing and 2. usable software that doesn't need to be "learned" the way today's does.
Today's computing is klunky, ugly, and expensive in terms of time needed to do things, space, electricity, and actual hardware/software costs.
The future of "computing" isn't bigger, better, and flashier... it's completely transparent.
-Chris
In the history of the software industry, there are the inventors and there are the businessmen. The inventors are people like :
Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston (Visicalc)
Woz (Apple)
Bill Gates (BASIC)
Bill Joy (vi, BSD, NFS)
Douglas Engelbart (mouse, GUI, groupware, live video conferencing, hypertext help)
Bob Metcalf (ethernet)
Richie, Kernighan, Thompson (C, unix)
Seymour Cray (Cray supercomputers)
David Patterson (RISC, RAID)
Tim Berners-Lee (the world wide web)
etc.
Most of them didn't succeed commercially.
And there are the businessmen, the people who are really good at understanding a totally new fertile field and transforming technology into success:
Scott McNealy (sun)
Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Jim Clark (SGI, netscape)
Seymour Cray (Cray supercomputers)
Larry Ellison (Oracle)
Mitch Kapor (Lotus)
Steve Jobs (apple)
These are two very different fields, and very few people are good at both.
Frankly, marca hasn't invented anything, and he was never a business leader. He took an existing product (the web browser) and made it popular thru free downloading. Yes, this was an earthshaking phenomenon in the industry, but he did not invent the browser, nor did he lead Netscape on to a powerful business position. In fact, he was hardly ever in charge of netscape - that was Barksdale.
And if we are to believe news reports, he never coded anything after Netscape took off. Whatever your opinion of Bill Gates is, he still codes, and he has even participated in coding competitions as CEO. It probably explains why he's good at understanding both the technical and business end of things.
I would be surprised if anything radical comes from Andreesen. Heck, I would be surprised if anything radical comes from this new company - web hosting & e-commerce isn't likely to shock anyone at this point.
w/m.
-- I'm not a freak show, I'm a mammal. --
Ob means obligatory, and BZZZZZT try again means that Gates never invented BASIC. You want to take Gates out of that top list and put "John Kemeny of Dartmouth" in his place. That's who invented BASIC, and maybe some day more people will give him credit for it than Gates.
A good point. I suppose it's too simple, but what would be wrong with requiring each *user* of the software to have rights to the source? The GPL assumed that you would have to distribute to each user, so I think this would preserve the intention.
However this would make new GPL'd software less attractive to Marc and Sun if many users compile the sources locally (after patching them so they'll work locally.) This would allow avoiding fees on the thin-client service for those with sufficient local resources to run binaries.
If the apps are real honkers like Word and StarOffice, I doubt the loss will be too significant, so maybe we *should* make the GPL more strict. Otherwise, I can easily see all the apps providers getting into a war of proprietary features, which is not good.
This isn't consumer apps running on a portal, this is a business to business startup, and fulfills a similar function as UUNET, Exodus, or AboveNet.
In the ole days, people got their own T1 lines to their office and hosted their web sites on their own machines, had their own network admins, their own cable/hardware guys, etc.
First step: eliminate the hassle of running a T1 and maintaining your own "high availability" stuff.
Companies: Exodus, AboveNet. Gigabits of bandwidth, earthquake proof, power failure proof, fault tolerant. Pay $1800/mo and stick a few rackmounted machines there, and they do the rest.
No brainer for most businesses.
Hosting servers at a professional hosting service is much better than running a T1 from your ISP. The ISP's quality of service simply can't compete.
Next step: services. Example: email. Email is a commodity. Why pay a staff $200k a year plus capital costs to host sendmail, exchange, or lotus notes on your network when you can just "outsource" it to USA.net, Mail.com, CriticalPath, for a small fee and not have to deal with the headache? There is no way your average mail admin will achieve the scalability and level of service that you will get at say, CriticalPath.
Next steps: Why go through the hassle of having to purchase your own copy of Oracle, or an Application server, and pay an Oracle DBA or CIO lots of money to maintain them, their uptime, and the quality of service?
If you have a bright idea for the Next-Big-Thing, and want to start coding immediately next week, and you can't afford to hire lots of people, why not just rent space on someone else's professionally maintained DB/Application Server/Network, etc.
By outsourcing these services, you don't need to waste time, and money, developing your own inhouse installation, and struggling to maintain the QoS that a professionally run organization has. Or for that matter, the fault-tolerance of leasing a DB/Server on an E10000!
Andressen's idea is simply to setup the DB/App server, and simply sell the right to run your servlets, CGIs, applets, etc on their servers.
I can tell you that it's a very valuable proposition to some companies. It's too distracting to have developers wasting time performing maintaince on hardware, software, network, etc.
Now, you can easily hire an inhouse admin to do it, but you still won't have the quality of running on a Sun Enterprise 10000 hosted at Exodus, with 24hr on-call staff, high security, subterranian power generators, etc Also, it takes time to hire someone and have them set it all up. With outsourcing, you make one phone call, write a check, and your developers can start coding the next day.
-Ray
When it does go belly up Marc can always go back to hocking Miller Lite with Norm Macdonald.
.company .completely sucked!
Marc: My last company didn't do so well, Norm.
Norm: I guess you can say your
*Canned Laughter*
UGGHH!!! I'm so sick of seeing VCs and Wall Street fawning over these companies that have absolutely WORTHLESS products. Has anyone here ever used Netscape Application Server? If you have, you know what a stinking turd it is. Want to scale your super-duper ".com" (and gawd, I'm so sick of that word) application using Netscape servers? Well, here's what you do: You buy several million dollars worth of high-end Sun hardware to run it and hire a flock of Java consultants to build your application for you. It will take them at least 6 months, probably a year, to develop the final product. When you're finally rolling, you'll have a bloated, unmanageable, Java-based three-tier app that barely functions, even when run on Sun's latest and greatest hardware. To support all this hardware, you'll need a room full of Solaris admins and systems support staff, and when its all said and done, your product is still as slow as a spilled bucket of tar on a North Dakota winter day. Trust me, I've worked for several companies that have gone this route and it ain't pretty.
The fact that this article touts that VCellar has hired someone who was formerly in charge of Kiva development scares me. I'll give them this, though--if you are foolish enough to go the three-tiered Java route, you'll need a company like Vcellar to help you run all the big iron you'll need to support your app.
The future of online computing, IMHO, is:
Perl
Mason
Apache
FreeBSD
mod_perl
Oracle
Dell hardware
VA Linux hardware
Unfortunately, many of the above will probably never be as popular is the "Vcellar" type solutions, because large companies love to spend huge amounts of investors' money. It's the nature of the beast.
> I suppose it's too simple, but what would be
> wrong with requiring each *user* of the
> software to have rights to the source?
Copyright law. It only restricts copying, not use. A license that required each user to get the source would thus require a signed contract, as copyright law doesn't apply.
Every damn year, sometimes every damn quarter, some greed-impaired schmuck regurgitates the idea of conning users into perpetually paying for software.
How the hell is this any different from what M$ is doing now. Upgrade treadmill baby. To me this is the big advantage of Linux. I AM OFF THE TREADMILL!!
Amazingly, even end users recognize the scam for what it is and reject it every freaking time.
Yeah, but PHB's are vulnerable to the sales pitch.
Upgrades notwithstanding, you can buy MS Word and use it until the last x86 processor releases the magic smoke.
Interesting theory, but file format changes make this impractical. Buy MS and you are on the treadmill baby. No getting off until you fdisk.
Why the press and investors keep falling for this crap is beyond me.
The main reason is support costs. The initial cost of a PC with software is trivial compared to the support costs. The first guy who comes up with a way to eliminate support costs is going to end up MUCH richer than Bill Gates. Some people think remote hosted software is the way to do this.
Do you really want the output of you're programs to be forced to be GPL? That would mean that every program you compiled with GCC would be under the GPL, every webpage you made with Emacs you wouldn't own, every graphic you made with the GIMP would be public property. That's a terrible Idea. Also, those 'click to agree' licenses arn't legaly binding.
The GPL alows 'interal propritary versions' of software, so don't sweat it. I'd be willing to bet that most of the extra features will be custom perl/java/VB scripts anyway, and not modifications to GPL software. You'll still be able to get the origional software, so don't worry
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Sadly, every product that exists is in some way flawed.
:-(. If Microsoft's does, it's because they have the applications mainstream users want.
The Ford Contour I'm renting right now has great handling but a mediocre ride and a buzzy engine. Despite this, due to the handling it's one of the best rental cars I've driven.
Windows succeeded because people were ripe for the graphical interface. For mainstream folks, there is no doubt that the graphical interface is better, and so the product succeeded even though it had no reliability. In addition, and most importantly to its success, it was bundled with every non-Apple computer made. People could start with their familiar DOS applications, and slowly migrate over to Windows - which is, of course, exactly what happened.
What rivals existed - Unix on workstations and OS/2 on hopped-up PCs - required way too much in resources for the average computer user to consider. And the Mac was priced far too high for mainstream folks to afford.
This is what made Windows win. For the average consumer, it was the best product. That doesn't mean that it was a good product in any absolute sense. It just means it was the best at the time, or perhaps we should say the least awful.
I think you can see, though, that many of these factors simply would not apply for Marca's latest venture. He has no installed base of people who can be coaxed to try his product without additional effort. But he'll probably get a pile of money, and if he can get a good reputation, I think he has a shot. But only if his product really works, and works well. There will be enough competition in this sector to assure that either the working product will succeed, or Microsoft's will
I'm hoping that in the coming years, "least awful" will no longer be something you can build a viable business over. The fact that even the corporate lemmings seem skeptical about Windows 2000 is a nice start.
It's interesting to reflect that when there were only three TV networks, executives had a concept called "least objectionable program". The idea is that you have a little momentum that keeps you watching a program. When something comes up that you really hate, you change channels. Cable TV and the 500 channel universe has changed this; now people can actually find stuff they actively want to watch on some channel or another, so the principle just doesn't work as it used to.
I'm hoping the same thing will happen in computing. "Least objectionable software" is one heck of a way to run a business. But it's certainly how things work now.
D
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People like you just don't seem to get it.
When the Japanese started producing compact, cheap, smart cars, it shook the automotive industry. But can I get a large station wagon today if I want one? Can I get a pickup? Can I get an insanely illogically overpowered car like the Viper? Can I get an ATR, an SUV, a motorcycle, or a bicycle?
Yes, I think there is a market for Sun's new ideas. My parents would do well with something like the Ray, as would many of my non-techy friends and coworkers. But would I? Never. I love my PC, I love the freedom it gives me, I love the fact that I 500 mhz to my own disposal. I have filled my twenty gigabytes of harddisk space, flooded the 128 megs of memory, abused the hell out of my (overclocked) processor, and I shall do the same to my next, three times as powerful, PC.
Whether Microsoft will go away in the PC space is a question (after all, I and most people like me, use Linux) but the PC will NEVER die. The computer market is to big for there to be even a need for one dominant solution. Freedom is good.
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I'm tempted to laugh along, but I'm ready to give this a bit more credit.
The folks he took from Netscape include one of the two LDAP leads they got from UMich, and one of the Kiva appserver people. These two things were the strongest technology pieces they had in their core server line--and indeed, they're staying in the product line at Sun/iPlanet.
Still don't know what they're going to do.. the speculation is less than compelling. Netsacape tried to sell a product line of bare servers with no bundled finished apps (in contrast with Notes, for one), and fell on their collective arse. Hosted bare server apps? Ehh.
And Andressen himself was very much a figurehead much of the time at Netscape. But even if you think of Andressen as a money guy instead of a tech guy, he's an asset. He has a good rolodex.