Success depends strongly on having a clear definition of success in advance. You can have 100% success if your goal is only to make the code available. You can have complete failure if you have inspecific (which usually means unrealistic) ideas about getting huge consulting contracts and massive participation in developing the code
If by "successful open source project" you mean one with an active community of contributors, I would be wary of a definition of success that depends on the unpredictable actions of as-yet-unknown strangers. In any case, developing and maintaining such a group takes work.
Since the application is very specific to a vertical market, can one expect to see the same results that other open source projects see?
Sure. In fact, the smaller the pond, the bigger the fish you can be -- but it's all relative, of course. Again, determine a reasonable definition of success. Will you feel less successful if only one other organization uses your code (in the short term)? Why or why not? Have you lost anything if no-one adopts it?
Other success factors you mention are getting consulting contracts and raising your profile. These are both possible, but not knowing your industry I won't give you advice on how to achieve them. But again, knowing in advance exactly what it is you want to achieve (and how you are going to measure whether you've achieved it -- especially WRT raising profile) is key.
I didn't say they had 100% of the market. Just that they have so much that it would not be a sound business decision for them to assume they will maintain their current market share.
That quote is really, really obvious. Do you think Google do not realise their position?
Why do you think they have Google groups, news, images? why do you think they are constantly innovating, trying to find another piece of functionality that will keep them alive.
Yes, but my question was what will they do next when they need to grow the company to at least several times it's current size (possibly much more than that) in order to live up to their market cap? That takes alot more than just adding new services at the rate they have been.
it still provides a good search engine with no ads it can't become another Netscape. If it becomes too bloated on the main search engine page it'll still be a good search engine. However, if they change the search engine code so much that it no longer functions efficiently and smoothly without problems (the way it does now), it may become a failure.
The issue isn't the quality of the product. Even if you have the best product in the world, it's still possible for your stock to be overvalued. The rumored market cap of the IPO values Google at far more than what the their current value based on their current revenue/profit (as estimated by outsiders). If they want to not become another Netscape (in terms of business failure, not product quality) they'll need to grow the company by several times to match the value of the IPO. This means they need to get into new areas of business because they're already the king of Internet search, they can't dominate it much more than they do (no where to go but down -- I'm talking market share, not product quality). This too sounds like the road Netscape was on not so long ago.
I didn't say there was no room for improvement. Just that it would be unreasonable to count on maintaining their current market share regardless of the quality of the product. They'll have to find new markets.
This quote from the article is the key issue I think. (The IPO is rumored to be for a total of $15 billion)
Meta Group, a consultancy, reckons that the market for paid search and other contextual advertising will grow to $5 billion by 2006. This is Google's main market opportunity (although it also gets some revenues from licensing its search technology). Currently, Google is thought to make annual profits of about $150m.
To be worth the rumoured $15 billion for longer than it takes a bubble to burst, it will need to raise its profitability substantially. That means matching such internet stars as eBay (market capitalisation $37 billion), but without the natural-monopoly advantages that have made eBay so dominant--the classic network effect of buyers and sellers knowing they do best by all trading in one place. For Google to stay permanently ahead of other search-engine technologies is almost impossible, since it takes so little--only a bright idea by another set of geeks--to lose the lead. In contrast to a portal such as Yahoo!, which also offers customers free e-mail and other services, a pure search engine is always but a click away from losing users.
Google is doing great, but they can't expect to dominate internet searches any more than they do. In fact, their business plan should allow for their market share in that area to decrease significantly. Each time a the next great new SE comes along, it quickly takes a big bite out of the market as Google itself has done most recently. Where might they expand their business in the future? (And how much revenue and/or profit do they need to justify a $15 billion market cap, anyway? I know it's alot more than the profit numbers in the article).
The primary content of sitefinder was Overture pay-per-click search links. I don't recall the domain registration business being featured prominently, though I'm sure they had a link on there somewhere.
There are two separate roles that Versign has/had here.
They are the registry operator who run the core database of domain names for various TLDs, including.com and.net. They do this on behalf of ICANN and the US Dept of Commerce (in the case of.com and.net). This also means they run the root DNS for those TLDs. This is the position that allowed them to create their SiteFinder "service." The registry operator gets information about the domains from registrars.
In addition, they are one of the many competing domain name registrars.
Though they acquired both of these functions by buying Network Solutions, they are only selling the registrar business. While this removes a conflict of interest for them, it doesn't do anything for the recent controversy
Check out this help wanted ad from Boxpilot (one of the companies in this business) to see how this is done. A live person calls your company and asks the receptionist to be transfered to your voicemail box, and then s/he presses play on the message. There's no automated/technological solution to block that, and I don't know if you want the receptionist to question the intentions of anyone who wants to be transferred to your voicemail.
He could have signed his name and made it seem less like he was speaking on behalf of the company. But that's mostly irrelevant because . . .
A CxO is legally obligated to protect the company's financial interests. If a CxO decides that the only right thing to do in a situation outside of work is a course of action that is in conflict with the company's financial interests, then a parting of the ways with the employer is necessary and inevitable (the other option is to convince the company's execs and/or board to take this stand as a company and adjust the company's financial interests to remove the conflict). Life is full of hard choices. If he found it impossible to steer the company away from this clash between his belief and the company's financial interests, then he made the right choice. And the company did the only thing they could have done in response. A lower level employee could have been dealt with in another way but a top exec can't remain in a situation like this.
Did he do this on his own, or as an @stake employee?
In the paper's
(pdf) list of authors, he is listed as "Daniel Geer, Sc.D
-- Chief Technical Officer, @Stake"
Also perhaps of interest is the fact that he is listed first
of the paper's seven authors
I find it rather disturbing that a company can fire you
for something you do of your own accord. What's next, are
companies who like to suck up to MS gonna fire you for developing
a linux program?
If your company has a financial stake in the success of X and
you take deliberate action to reduce the success of X (in this
case, making a public warning that the success itself results in
harm to the public at large), then yes.
Yeah, and 99% of those signatures are probably fake. They are no better than than a Slashdot poll
The point is that it's an example of an online petition that had the intended effect (a majority vote in the senate to roll back an FCC policy decision)
Do you disagree with this statement: "Any application which behaves differently when given a valid domain name than when given an invalid domain name will now behave unexpectedly."
Clarifications: (1) Assume the expectations in question were in place before this week. (2) To what degree and how often an application will behave unexpectedly will vary for application and for each instance of an application. (3) The consequences of this unexpected behaviour will also vary by application/instance.
If you disagree with the statement above, then that's where our difference lies.
Again, the technical issue alone is not even the biggest part of what people are upset about. Verisign is (1) using their unique position as the registry manager for financial gain and (2) doing so in violation of the contract under which they manage the registry.
"Breaks" does not mean "renders completely unusable" -- you're the one who's exagerating here. Any application that performed differently when given a valid domain than when given an invalid domain name will no longer perform as expected. Even if it is easy to fix all this software (and I don't believe it's as simple as you say, nor that Verisign won't counteract such measures), that doesn't mean that what Verisign did is okay. (Not to mention that, aside from general discussions of ethics or legality, it's forbidden by their contract with ICANN)
With MS, you have a choice whether or not to use their product -- VS is the sole operator of the registry
MS allows you to turn off this feature
MS is just at the browser level. This is the biggest problem with what VS has done: they've broken the DNS system, part of the underlying structure of the Internet. If they could redirect web browsers without this, it wouldn't be such a big deal, but changing the DNS system so that it no longer indicates when a domain doesn't exist breaks every application on the 'net.
Slashdot Mirror
Success depends strongly on having a clear definition of success in advance. You can have 100% success if your goal is only to make the code available. You can have complete failure if you have inspecific (which usually means unrealistic) ideas about getting huge consulting contracts and massive participation in developing the code
If by "successful open source project" you mean one with an active community of contributors, I would be wary of a definition of success that depends on the unpredictable actions of as-yet-unknown strangers. In any case, developing and maintaining such a group takes work.
Sure. In fact, the smaller the pond, the bigger the fish you can be -- but it's all relative, of course. Again, determine a reasonable definition of success. Will you feel less successful if only one other organization uses your code (in the short term)? Why or why not? Have you lost anything if no-one adopts it?
Other success factors you mention are getting consulting contracts and raising your profile. These are both possible, but not knowing your industry I won't give you advice on how to achieve them. But again, knowing in advance exactly what it is you want to achieve (and how you are going to measure whether you've achieved it -- especially WRT raising profile) is key.
Sounds like your problem is with your ISP. Would you blame Microsoft if someone used Outlook Express to mail a false complaint to your ISP?
Absolutely. That's what I think too. But this IPO would mean that's no longer an option -- it would make doubling in size a failure.
I didn't say they had 100% of the market. Just that they have so much that it would not be a sound business decision for them to assume they will maintain their current market share.
The issue isn't the quality of the product. Even if you have the best product in the world, it's still possible for your stock to be overvalued. The rumored market cap of the IPO values Google at far more than what the their current value based on their current revenue/profit (as estimated by outsiders). If they want to not become another Netscape (in terms of business failure, not product quality) they'll need to grow the company by several times to match the value of the IPO. This means they need to get into new areas of business because they're already the king of Internet search, they can't dominate it much more than they do (no where to go but down -- I'm talking market share, not product quality). This too sounds like the road Netscape was on not so long ago.
I didn't say there was no room for improvement. Just that it would be unreasonable to count on maintaining their current market share regardless of the quality of the product. They'll have to find new markets.
This quote from the article is the key issue I think. (The IPO is rumored to be for a total of $15 billion)
Google is doing great, but they can't expect to dominate internet searches any more than they do. In fact, their business plan should allow for their market share in that area to decrease significantly. Each time a the next great new SE comes along, it quickly takes a big bite out of the market as Google itself has done most recently. Where might they expand their business in the future? (And how much revenue and/or profit do they need to justify a $15 billion market cap, anyway? I know it's alot more than the profit numbers in the article).
The redemption period is an invention of Verisign and applies to all registrars. Verisign is getting most of that $99
Last month Mr. Scalvos's approval rating went down to 3%. Think it will be lower this month? (vote here - bottom of page).
The primary content of sitefinder was Overture pay-per-click search links. I don't recall the domain registration business being featured prominently, though I'm sure they had a link on there somewhere.
Though they acquired both of these functions by buying Network Solutions, they are only selling the registrar business. While this removes a conflict of interest for them, it doesn't do anything for the recent controversy
He's not blaming the hammer. He just wants to inform the user in a timely fashion that the lawn still needs mowing.
Check out this help wanted ad from Boxpilot (one of the companies in this business) to see how this is done. A live person calls your company and asks the receptionist to be transfered to your voicemail box, and then s/he presses play on the message. There's no automated/technological solution to block that, and I don't know if you want the receptionist to question the intentions of anyone who wants to be transferred to your voicemail.
Well, blast away . . .
ICANN is accepting comments on Sitefinder. This page also has links to various official letters they've received.
Also, Lauren Weinstein 's People for Internet Responsibility is looking for data on the effects of sitefinderTwo thoughts:
He could have signed his name and made it seem less like he was speaking on behalf of the company. But that's mostly irrelevant because . . .
A CxO is legally obligated to protect the company's financial interests. If a CxO decides that the only right thing to do in a situation outside of work is a course of action that is in conflict with the company's financial interests, then a parting of the ways with the employer is necessary and inevitable (the other option is to convince the company's execs and/or board to take this stand as a company and adjust the company's financial interests to remove the conflict). Life is full of hard choices. If he found it impossible to steer the company away from this clash between his belief and the company's financial interests, then he made the right choice. And the company did the only thing they could have done in response. A lower level employee could have been dealt with in another way but a top exec can't remain in a situation like this.
In the paper's (pdf) list of authors, he is listed as "Daniel Geer, Sc.D -- Chief Technical Officer, @Stake"
Also perhaps of interest is the fact that he is listed first of the paper's seven authors
If your company has a financial stake in the success of X and you take deliberate action to reduce the success of X (in this case, making a public warning that the success itself results in harm to the public at large), then yes.
The petition overwhelmed petitiononline's system when it got to about 12,000 signatures. It's been moved to http://www.whois.sc/verisign-dns/.
Do you disagree with this statement: "Any application which behaves differently when given a valid domain name than when given an invalid domain name will now behave unexpectedly."
Clarifications: (1) Assume the expectations in question were in place before this week. (2) To what degree and how often an application will behave unexpectedly will vary for application and for each instance of an application. (3) The consequences of this unexpected behaviour will also vary by application/instance.
If you disagree with the statement above, then that's where our difference lies.
Again, the technical issue alone is not even the biggest part of what people are upset about. Verisign is (1) using their unique position as the registry manager for financial gain and (2) doing so in violation of the contract under which they manage the registry.
"Breaks" does not mean "renders completely unusable" -- you're the one who's exagerating here. Any application that performed differently when given a valid domain than when given an invalid domain name will no longer perform as expected. Even if it is easy to fix all this software (and I don't believe it's as simple as you say, nor that Verisign won't counteract such measures), that doesn't mean that what Verisign did is okay. (Not to mention that, aside from general discussions of ethics or legality, it's forbidden by their contract with ICANN)
Scroll down, there are multiple polls on the same page.
Is Stratton D. Sclavos doing a good job as CEO of Verisign? Vote yes or no in this Forbes.com poll.
Also, here's a petition that may also be of interest.
I don't think insurance can (or want to) pay fines for you.