Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
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Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#2- "As long as technology has a global reach, someone will have the world in the palm of his hand. If not Bob Page, then Everett, Dowd..." -Tracer Tong from Deus Ex (2000)
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#3Whoever controls the Internet accumulates enormous power. This is evident in things such as the enormous salaries of software engineers, social media's influence on public opinion, and Trump being able to stir his devotees to attack the US Capitol. I like the optimism of this piece - decentralized tech can revolutionize the Internet's cloud-based economy - but I would caution falling into the same hubris that technologists felt in the early 2000s about Big Tech. FAANG does not want to give up its immense power on the Internet, and there will always be somebody looking for ways to co-opt it if we move into a decentralized Internet economy.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#4Much of the groundwork for the internet and open software happened in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to influxes of government funding, including at many universities and research organizations.
I advocate for government funding for public good internet software, because the societal benefit can be so high, and the only alternative so far is monopoly-equivalent companies such as FAANG. In the United States, and in many other countries, there's plenty of precedence for government funding for public libraries, public broadcasting, public transportation, etc.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#5We desperately need a decent desktop operating system. After that basic need is satisfied, fixing the problems in the upper layers will be easier in comparison.
To develop any kind of software, you need to do so in a desktop operating system, so it's important for it to be reliable and usable.
I think the only viable way to achieve this is to create a Linux-based OS. Not another Linux distribution, but something consistent and well thought out and that solves the problems that no one in the Linux space wants to solve right now.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#6We desperately need a decent desktop operating system. After that basic need is satisfied, fixing the problems in the upper layers will be easier in comparison. To develop any kind of software, you need to do so in a desktop operating system, so it's important for it to be reliable and usable. I think the only viable way to achieve this is to create a Linux-based OS. Not another Linux distribution, but something cons…
What problems are those?
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#7We desperately need a decent desktop operating system. After that basic need is satisfied, fixing the problems in the upper layers will be easier in comparison. To develop any kind of software, you need to do so in a desktop operating system, so it's important for it to be reliable and usable. I think the only viable way to achieve this is to create a Linux-based OS. Not another Linux distribution, but something cons…
I totally agree with you, but lets not forget that we are going through a phase where the open source model is suffering over the lack of incentives.
We need to figure it out a good and sustainable economic model or else it might start falling apart.
I really think that society, governments, civil entities should step up with some formula, because i mean, this is the XXI century infrastructure.. open source software are now the "roads" where everything is passing through.
Government all around worry about their physical infrastructure, so why not start to care about the virtual infrastructure we all rely on? Where a big chunk of the economy, culture and society in general are relying on?
Unfortunately capitalism on its own is failing in presenting a good solution, unless you think the guy running (idk) some important crypto code having to take care of ads to survive is a sign that everything is working as it should.
I would love if we had some sort of "trickle-down tax", where we use dependency resolution and some algo to rate the importance of that particular dependency and make the software and services that are using them and being payed for it, to let some of the profit to help the open source ones (here i think a blockchain solution might be of some help, as things would be totally automated).
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#8We desperately need a decent desktop operating system. After that basic need is satisfied, fixing the problems in the upper layers will be easier in comparison. To develop any kind of software, you need to do so in a desktop operating system, so it's important for it to be reliable and usable. I think the only viable way to achieve this is to create a Linux-based OS. Not another Linux distribution, but something cons…
What problems are those?
Not having a keyboard-like pop-up app that can work inside all other apps that's half speech-to-text processor, half emoji picker, like you have on mobile except having it on desktop.
And a way to run all Windows software flawlessly.
And making KDE the default DE because it's the best one.
And Wayland feature parity.
And another packaging format that's like Flatpak and AppImage, except the best of both combined into one, that everyone uses from now on instead of any of the others.
And something about how good Macbook trackpads are.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#9I find this article naively optimistic (which may be unsurprising given how much Andreessen Horowitz is invested in the crypto space).
I don't see how anybody can delude themselves to think that blockchain is about giving control back to the users, or that it is somehow democratic. Just look at the distribution of the supply for any token. You'll have the top 1% of wallets controlling > 80% of the supply. Dev keeping half the supply to themselves. Even airdrops to users like Uniswap did don't prevent someone from buying up most of the supply. Crypto and governance tokens give you plutocracy, not democracy.
And that's not even mentioning the issue around access to the code (see Blockstream)
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#10We desperately need a decent desktop operating system. After that basic need is satisfied, fixing the problems in the upper layers will be easier in comparison. To develop any kind of software, you need to do so in a desktop operating system, so it's important for it to be reliable and usable. I think the only viable way to achieve this is to create a Linux-based OS. Not another Linux distribution, but something cons…
What problems are those?
1. We need a clear separation between system programs and application programs, so that a user can install the latest version of Python without it ever colliding with the outdated version of Python that the OS uses internally. The user shouldn't even need to be aware of the existence of the other Python.
2. The default way to install third-party application software shouldn't depend on repositories or servers. It should be based on installing files, just like on Windows. The OS should define a stable format for the OS to install, update and uninstall these files. Additionally, a permission system like Android's could be a good idea.
3. We need a desktop environment that's visually appealing and has a good UX.
4. We need centralized, thorough and official user documentation about the OS, so that the user doesn't need to browse random forums and wikis in order to learn how to use some piece of the OS. Note that this documentation is about the OS, not about third party software. And this documentation should be distinct from the developer's documentation.
5. Consistency. The user shouldn't need to learn 10 different config file formats or inconsistent command flags across the system in order to configure it.