On 11/17/2013 5:00 PM, Duncan Bayne wrote:
http://www.zdnet.com/theyre-killing-the-pc-7000023265/
"Here's what I see happening: Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft all
want us to buy appliances, not PCs. An appliance is a closed box. It can
only run the operating system they stick you with. It will only run the
applications they approve for it. Apple and Microsoft are particularly
strict about this.
A corollary to this is that you must buy a new appliance every few years
because the company will only support it that long. For example, you
simply can't upgrade to the latest applications or operating system on
older Apple or Android tablets and smartphones. With a PC, you could
upgrade it, baby it, and run the newest programs and operating system
for up to a decade. That isn't even an option with appliances."
In a decade, the web might be the only practical way to write and
'distribute' software. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing
(although I wouldn't have picked Javascript as the language of the
Singularity if I'd a choice in the matter).
But what it does mean is that we have a great responsibility to build
the best Web that we can. That *should* involve rejecting as a standard
any technology that is not compatible with the Open Web as currently
defined by the W3C.
I agree that a primary battleground is the competition between closed
boxes and the open Web.
The reason that content protection is in scope for W3C is that we cannot
compete if we don't have a framework to accept protected content. We
would like to find a way to do that which is consistent with open web
principles. That's the reason that we have rejected anything
proprietary or patent encumbered from the Open Web Platform.
Brendan Eich's recent blog posting also points to ways to bridge that
tension.
https://brendaneich.com/2013/10/the-bridge-of-khazad-drm/
(It *should* also involve giving access to their own data in
interop-friendly formats, or allowing users to use their own data
storage. But that's another battle altogether.)
