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(OOPSLA 2003) Thursday |
Past OOPSLA trip reports can be found at Trip Reports I've Written in the past
Back to Wednesday
Note on Nov 5th 2003 this paged was moved to a Wiki so you can edit it there. Please read it over there, this copy is here for historical reasons. http://wiki.cs.uiuc.edu/CampSmalltalk/OOPSLA+2003+Trip+report+Thursday.
Tim O'Reilly
Internet paradigm shift
Oops no slides, were are the slides?
{I'll note the heavy use of Unix laptops (aka Apple PowerBooks) at the conference}
Paradigm Shift
A change in world view that calls everything you know into question.
Astronomy comes to mind
PC Paradigm Shift
Apple verses IBM
Commodity hardware with open architecture
Dell versus IBM
Low cost and a pure play commodity hardware business model beat proprietary add-ons.
Companies stuck in the old paradigm die off:
Digital, Data General, Prime
Even open architectures have proprietary components - "Intel inside"
Old companies said we make better hardware, they vanish.
Only one that is left is Apple.
PC Paradigm Shift (Software)
Software de-coupled from hardware
Microsoft beats IBM
IBM didn't understand paradigm shift.
Ok another shift
How many linux users?. (lots)
How many non-linux users? (lots & lots)
Ok how many use google?
Everyone
Well you all use Linux!
Failure to understand that Google, amazon, paypal and yahoo/maps is linux.
Another Paradigm Failure
Applications are being created by open source developer
software code isn't distributed
licenses triggered by binary software distribution have no effect.
The value in these application is in their data and their customer interactions more than in the software. Most are fiercely proprietary!!!
William Gibson "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet."
A core part of my business I look at where things are ahead of the curve.
The Internet Paradigm Shift
Commodity software with an open architecture.
Information application is de-coupled from both hardware and software.
Competitive advantage and revenue opportunities move "up the stack" to services above the level of a single device.
Lock in is based on data and customer relationships, not proprietary software
Intel is still "Inside", but so is Cisco, and eventually others -- there's plenty of room at the bottom as well as the top
The Internet Application Platform
Commodity Intel hardware
The internet protocol stack and utilities like BIND
LAMP (linux/freebsd, apache, mySQL, PHP)
Beyond the license
Commoditization of software
user-customizable systems
network-enabled Collaboration
Linux on Intel gives 10x cost savings.
Apache means web serving is not a revenue opportunity.
MYSQL threatens to do the same for databases, even if Larry disagrees.
Open source promotes competition and drives down margins.
Open Unix/Linux/Internet architecture makes "plug-compatible" software the norm.
Proprietary alternatives must become free (as in beer) to complete -usually bundled with added value components
Beware PC were not great when introduced but they outran the old machine makers.
Linus & linux
WIndows is big blob
Unix is make of small parts you can wrap your thoughts around.
Software Customization, or Why the 'P' Matters So Much
Von Kempelen's mechanical Turk
Got Babbage to think about computing
It was fake of course
Google or Amazon
don't work without the people
Lots of people shoveling coal into the boilers
It's a process, not a software solution.
Customizability at Work
Commodity components provide platform and infrastructure, on which additional software is built for use in delivering services, not for sale.
Internet-era applications are updated daily, not yearly
Interfaces are built with dynamic data, not just software you might call this "infoware"
Dynamic languages like Perl, PHP, Python are key to daily update managing infoware interfaces and gluing together software components.
Compare "Longhorn" delivery in 2004? to folks who do 3 features a day to their website.
Web changed how we build application interfaces.
All this information with a little bit of logic to enable the 'BUY'
Network-enabled Collaboration
Usenet: the real mother of open source
The adhocracy like-minded developers can find each other and work in ever-shifting groups
Software development teams can be distributed even internationally
Power shifts from companies to individuals
users help to build the application
Licensing was a defensive mechanism to close down the free software movement, kill the party.
ATT tried to cut down BSD but that lead to Linux, and Net/Open/Free BSD.
Software teams now distributed
People become important.
Mind at Microsoft we see people come to the front and go away, not the same say as for Larry Wall & Perl, he is Perl regardless of who he works for.
However as an example people (millions) provide information/reviews web interface changes to Amazon. The software isn't better than B&N but Amazon has the huge number of people building their product
Let me introduce one of my companies: Collabnet
Collaborative techniques are increasingly being applied to proprietary software
Microsoft ASP.net
Within a large-enough development organization, OOS-like behavior emerges
That was how this product started, it was not a formal product until it got big..
{Missed something}
Collaboration at the Data Layer
Napster/Kazaa users build song swapping network as byproducts of their own self interest
Google leverages millions of independent linkers via PageRank Algorithm
More people have "contributed" to Amazon than Linux! {hours, typing, information, etc}
Real lesson of Napster was build an architecture of participation.
Google participates by linking
Users build Google by linking to others from their sites which are then again spidered by Google.
MapQuest, the first killer internet map.
MapQuest will die, no participation, no locking for people. People can't contribute to MapQuest.
MS will own that market someday...?
Business Model Thoughts for Commodity Software
IBM websphere (same as) Compaq
??? = DELL
- Who will that be?
There are many possible "Intels Inside". Not just LAMP, but: J2EE .NET
Platform - web services (digital identity, location search)
Aggregated and sold by subscription, not by the piece.
How usenet access was free, but hard to do, then uuenet offered easy access but for a cost.
Then free access went away. Same for Kazaa etc, once right price point is reached they will go away. Pricing will become (low,mid,super) {and tie to service levels}
Money on the internet
Services like for service contracts on the internet? Nope
Amazon is a service
Examples Paul Vixan? BIND everyone uses it, but Network Solutions does the management.
They didn't understand the hidden business model when spun off from the USA government. Yet now they make *lots* of money.
Dave Stutz's Manifesto
"Useful software written above the level of the single device will command margins for a long time to come"
"Stop looking over your shoulder and invent something!"
Lets look at Apple's Itunes
A system for managing your music
On my Powerbook I have 1681 songs, 8.51gb, 4.4 days of music.
Also have an iPod
Oh look someone has iTunes and he's sharing his song database!! This is all done automatically.
{Since the convention center had 802.11b (airport) and itunes can be configured to share in a intra-net, then there was a share point}
Couldn't get to the data, the fellow's firewall was on.
{Colin Putney was doing the itunes share}
As you know Apple has a store.
Looks like a web application, but it's web app in the application and lots of work on their side managing the data.
Yet Apple's iApplications are inconsistent, iPhoto doesn't share.
So What keeps me up at night?
Internet application providers have gained from open source, but haven't been trained to give back, and are ignored by OSS advocates
Meanwhile, owning user data is the new source of lock-in
What's more a platform strategy beats an application strategy every time:
Remember
Marc Andreesen - windows is just a bag of drivers
Jim Allchin " It's just like a GUI
Led to failure of Netscape.
Two types of Platforms either:
One Ring to rule them ALL {or}
Small Pieces Loosely Joined
So Small Pieces Loosely Joined
An architecture of participation means that our users help to extend your platform
Low barriers to experimentation mean that the system is "hacker friendly" for maximum innovation
Interoperability means that one component or service can be swapped out if a better one comes along "Lock-in' comes because other depend on the benefit from your services, not because you're completely in control
I'll skip some slides, want some question period time.
Quote from Ray Kurzweil
I'm an inventor I became interested in long term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world, in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.
Question:
Most of the top of the stack applications/systems, require lots of people. Where do the little application, people fit in?
Hard to say
Proprietary small market is very small
Remember amazon & google came out of nowhere
Most propriety software companies fail
Only a few service companies generate 6 figures per person, most do <100K
software license versus software renting, look the same {Not sure I caught this}
Question
Distributed software development
Doesn't work, no shared coffee machine, timezone issues.
Answer
They have been made to work.
Question
Cars resulted in explosion of service stations, aren't they any small business opportunities?
Answer
Watch the Alpha Geeks
Net technologies first exploited by hackers, then entrepreneurs, then platform players
Two examples
Wireless community network predicted universal Wi-Fi "Rob Flickenger & Pringle cans"
Screen scraping predicts web servers.
Migration from Pringles can, free. To Starbucks offering of 802.11b in stores.
Question
Meta-Question
How do you figure out what is next?
Asking people, looking for info
I studied Greek and Latin Classic. I'm like a parser. Looking for Patterns.
Looking at what does it mean?
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So end another OOPSLA, certainly smaller than previous events, still, important leaders of the industry attend, interesting papers presented, tutorials, and time to meet and talk to people about goals for the coming year. So until next OOPSLA or Camp Smalltalk, your author bids goodnight.
Please note I'll repost to a wiki so you can all edit come Nov 1st or so.