Monthly Archives: March 2004

you go first

Boing Boing: Gates’s vision — and failure thereof:

In the same breath, though, Gates predicts that software won’t be free — though he has no good explanation for this (presumably, it’s because universal free software would be bad for his business, so he can’t bring himself to contemplate the possibility).

I saw something about this earlier today and the irony was overwhelming. This is the kind of business partner I want: “hey, I have an idea, let’s give your stuff away while I keep selling mine. Never mind that yours is actually physical stuff that costs money to make while mine is an increasingly marginalized commodity that has production costs approaching zero.”

Another innovative insight . . . .

It does seem likely that hardware, as we currently conceive of it, will drop in price, but to get to zero or damn near suggests there won’t be any new developments: here’s a few that I think we’ll see. Mr Gates’ vision of tablet devices raises a few ideas that would be required, without even thinking that hard: and he expects them to be free?

* increased portability resulting from
** better power management
** more efficient software design
** fewer moving parts/solid state storage
* ubiquitous networking
** broadband everywhere
** wireless everywhere
** robust IP addressing (IPv6?)
** compelling, useful services, that capture some revenue

When you consider how well the various free operating systems support existing consumer electronics, not just traditional computers — check out NetBSD to see what they’ve already done, to say nothing of the various hardware platforms supported by Linux — it seems likely that new hardware will be supported by free OSes almost as quickly as by proprietary ones. Right now, proprietary OSes drive hardware but that may not be the case forever.

a refreshing insight

Mena’s Corner: Where did those 22 other people come from?

Last week it finally sunk in that we’ve done an extremely poor job communicating about the growth of Six Apart to our users and to the weblogging community. This silence can be partly attributed to the sort of confidentiality that’s required when working with partners or brokering deals.

This will be worth following: it’s always refreshing to have someone learn from their mistakes and be open about it all.

I’ve been down on SixApart for this very thing: they haven’t communicated well or much with their installed base. Making an effort like this will go along way to bringing those of us who have become disenchanted back into the fold. Admittedly, the emergence of TypePad, the work going into MT Pro, and the firestorm around TypeKey has probably taken up a lot of their time. Let’s hope this channel stays open . . . .