it's not about the benjamins (yet)
One of my colleagues just pointed me to this blog post where Simeon Bateman calls Mozilla an ungrateful child.
I started to post a reply there but it got a bit longer than what I think fits in "comments" format so I'm posting it here instead (though, this is still more in the "reply" format than the "post" format.)
Simeon's basic assertion is that Adobe is doing a lot to open up some parts of their next-generation platform and Mozilla is a crybaby for suggesting that Adobe might have less than pure motives.
A secondary point, if I'm reading him correctly, is that Adobe deserves to be making lots of money by extending its control of the Web and Mozilla shouldn't be complaining about corporations undermining the free and open Web for profit because Mozilla gave up any say it had when it decided to operate as a public-benefit organization. Stupid Mozilla. You never should have put the interests of a free and open Internet ahead of the corporate bottom line.
So, here's my reply:
For Microsoft and Adobe, it's not about the money (yet.) It's about owning the platform.
Right now, the Web platform doesn't belong to any mega-corporation and the protocols and specifications that underlie the Web are developed in a cooperative process between many of the implementers.
The real issue here is the Web platform (HTML/CSS+JavaScript, plus lots of other cool bits,) that Adobe and Microsoft are challenging and determined to supplant and replace.
It's not that difficult for honest observers to admit that the open Web platform is much harder to monetize over the long run than open Web replacements like Adobe's flex+flash+actionscript or Microsoft's xaml+wpf+.net. (and yes, don't kid youself. Adobe and Microsoft are building replacements for the open Web with Air and Silverlight.)
Both Microsoft and Adobe want to own as much of the post-desktop platform as possible. Adobe has a big short term lead with the ubiquity of Flash, and Microsoft has the medium term advantage of a desktop monopoly with Windows (and whatever they want to label and distribute as a part of Windows.) The Air and Silverlight pushes coming from these companies are all about who will own the biggest piece of the next-generation Web platform pie.
And, don't be fooled by the big giveaways from Adobe and Microsoft. If owning the eventual Web.next platform, or even a large chunk of it, means giving away a lot in the short term, they're happy to give, give, give. It's taken a decade and a half for the Web to advance to where it is today and Microsoft and Adobe aren't focused on 2008 or even 2009. They're looking out at the Web of 2010 and beyond and doing everything in their power to be in control of as much of that space as possible.
As for what they're actually giving away, documenting the protocols and specifications and allowing others to re-implement them is interesting, but it's not open. Open is developing the protocols and specifications in a co-operative and participatory environment and then competing on implementations. Neither Adobe nor Microsoft are being truly open on this front, because doing so would mean giving up their big shot at control of the next generation Web platform.
If I was in Adobe's shoes, I'd give everything away, all of it. Hell, I'd pay people to develop on the Adobe platform and I'd encourage dozens of competing implementations of my platform across every type of device imaginable because, in the end, it'd be my platform and I'd decide how and when it evolved and to what ends.
And I'd do the same if I was Microsoft.
But, I'm neither. So, all I can do in this battle for the future of the Web is to advocate for advances in real open Web standards from groups like ECMA, W3C, and WHATWG. It may be a bit slower to market, (hopefully not too much slower,) via the collaborative and open road, but the end result is a powerful Web platform that isn't, and cannot be, controlled by any one company.
And to those who think I'm some anti-capitalist, I don't think there's anything wrong with people and companies making money. I don't even care if they're making ridiculous amounts of money. But the Web has always been about more than making ridiculous amounts of monkey. The Web has substantial non-commercial aspects including critical educational, social, and civic value that should not be owned or controlled for the purpose of driving corporate profits.
If we cede control of the Web platform to one or two large corporations, we will cede a big piece of what makes the Web so amazing and no short-term sparkle and flash are worth that concession.
Be careful. The first dose is always free.
Photo by Flickr user laughlin and used under a Creative Commons license.
reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.
Hi Asa, I am glad you found my post and thought it worth replying to. You are certainly correct that Adobe has not opened up the Flash Player (yet). But what I would like to emphasize is the fact that while they have always been a for profit company, the choices they have made in the last year around open sourcing their products is nothing short of outstanding. And while Flash Player is not one of those products they have chosen to open up all the code on, they are removing the restrictions around applications that can use the SWF format.
Open sourcing the flex framework, the messaging and remoting portion of the liveycyle server, and removing restrictions from the SWF and FLV formats makes Adobe no money. They also open sourced and donated the core technology, the actionscript virtual machine, of the flash player to mozilla for the tamarin project. And I am happy for you that they did. They wont even likely sell more products for doing so. I truely believe that they are doing this because they think it will make the ecosystem around building rich internet applications stronger.
Does that gain them market share? Its pretty hard to beat the player penetration numbers they already have. Flash player 9 has a higher install number than any single browser I would expect, because it runs in all of them. If I could write javascript applications and know that they would run the way I intended I would probably be less excited by what flash offers me. But until all the browsers run JS and render CSS in a way that give me any confidence that I can provide a positive experience for my customers, flash is the platform of choice. Open or closed its still a better platform for me.
Posted by: Simeon | May 5, 2008 9:41 PM
That is a lot of "monkey" indeed.
Tell Simian *AHEM* Simeon that Flash isn't a replacement for JS or CSS in any shape, for or fashion. And until I can get a flash player that won't crash my browser or suck up insane cpu cycles, JS and CSS does just fine now.
Posted by: Omega X | May 5, 2008 10:36 PM
I don't know why there is this weird viewpoint about open source technology. It's like come on guys. The world is built on exchange and economics. Someone has to survive. It's not about being a free world where everyone owns everything. That's a criminal society and will never work.
It's about producing a product that is valuable and someone thinks its valuable and exchanges his production for goods.
Let's get real here.
Posted by: AK | May 5, 2008 11:49 PM
What I've wondered about for some time... is the ECMA in JavaScript the same ECMA that also participaded in the OOXML standardization? The one that is (by many of those who are opposed to the way OOXML got standardized) deemed to be something like a "wholly Microsoft owned subsidiary"?
I always thought that the two have to be entirely different organizations, one is "nice" and helps to independently standardize ECMAScript, and the other one is "bad", because it's controlled by Microsoft and helped to put an ISO stamp on something that is years before being ready (not to mention the patent licensing issues).
But if they're the same, then MS has probably won in a certain sense already, because it controls one aspect of the web the same way it was able to influence the standardization of OOXML.
Posted by: Kim Sullivan | May 6, 2008 1:58 AM
Hey Omega X, Thanks for the personal slight glad to see you would rather make personal attacks than actually address the issue.
I build business applications for the web. And you are right, Flash and JavaScript and CSS can work all together. But what I was referring to is my decision to build RIA's utilizing the Flash Platform rather than AJAX. For the shorter development cycle, the strong tooling and the reach that the flash platform has make flash the only choice for me. Open as its getting, or closed as the parts remain, its still a great solution for building the business critical data backed applications that I am tasked to create.
I can not comment on flash player "locking" your browser, but from my own experience and the buzz on the net the browsers are not fairing all that well with JS applications either. Google has done wonders as the poster child for AJAX web applications but gmail and reader have been on the blink lately. So removing flash player wont fix all your browser crashing issues.
But again, this is really about my choice to use a platform that has been completely closed for its entire existence and that the owner of that platform (Adobe) has chosen to loosen the reigns on. I consider that to be a step in the right direction. YMMV. thanks.
Posted by: Simeon | May 6, 2008 7:13 AM
There's something wrong with the beloved CSS on your page here - it's cutting off the rightmost chars of most lines on Mac/FF. Irony much? It's precisely this kind of problem that ADBE has made its opportunity - normalizing platform woes and providing a smoother development model. I give big respect to both Moz and ADBE, and don't subscribe to any of the conspiracy nonsense here. Maybe if Moz had a financial incentive, I'd be able to read your entire post?
Posted by: coward | May 6, 2008 8:54 AM
Interesting enough, I already replied you on something different which might be also interesting reading here: http://features20.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-to-make-software-companies-compete.html (and it is also reply too long to be anything but blog post)
In short, world can`t afford 2 platforms. But it also can`t afford no competition. But there might be the solution
Posted by: Ivan Ičin | May 6, 2008 9:56 AM