Open Source Economics Driving Web 2.0 Innovation
Posted by rreo on June 12, 2007
I think one of the conculsions to get from the discussion this week is that there are multiple drivers of Web 2.0. Which one of Anderson’s Big Ideas does this belong to?
June 13th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Rick, what a great article!
I think this falls under a number of the Big Ideas, but chiefly “Architecture of Participation,” because Anderson states that open source software is a “service that can… facilitate mass user participation” (p 19). Architecture of Participation is the big idea that collaboration and user generated content have equal weight and importance in the Web 2.0 movement. A good example is that today everyone is able to make their own Power Points in Open Office and display them using Web 2.0 tools such as Vyew.com, meaning there is much greater access and participation of both PowerPoint as the distributed learning driver and Vyew as the online collaboration medium. In this sense the great software divide between haves and have nots has diminished a great deal. I also think that Anderson makes good use of a Tim O’Reilly quote, however, when distinguishing that the Open Source software movement really predates Web 2.0. He (Anderson) writes, “As a web 2.0 concept, this idea of opening up goes beyond the open source software idea of opening up code to developers, to opening up content to all users and exposing data for re-use and comibination in so-called mash-ups” (p. 19).
Finally, I was fascinated to hear the iTunes University download you posted that interviewed Tim O’Reilly. I thougth his comparison of Web 2.0 and open source software to the IBM personal computer and the creation of the software market was highly salient to the web’s future. O’Reilly’s main point was that the personal computer was originally the big value, big cost item in information techonlogy, yet once IBM made its blueprints “open source,” software emerged as the main money maker in the industry because it was not open source. O’Reilly’s point is that today’s open source software is a double-edged sword. We may eliminate the cost of purchasing Microsoft Office, but we will create another cost for ourselves in the long run. He suggests data mining and ownership of the tools to draw conclusions about data are the real growth areas for the IT sector, and therein advocates an intellectual property bill of rights to protect our data on social networking sites. He also insinuates that this is why Google is the company to watch over the next 10 years rather than Microsoft. The whole thing was just VERY INTERESTING, and clearly Mr. O’Reilly is a keyed in figure to this topic.