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Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#331

Post by sixdimensional »

kentonv wrote: post #327
sixdimensional wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the subtle marketecture trick here they are doing.. Non-technical people don't always think of an OS as the computer OS. To them, sometimes it means more like standard operating procedure or process - a standard way of doing things. Secondly, for tech products, calling yourself an OS, you are associating yourself with things like Windows, Mac or Linux. You are indirectly trying to grandstand and positi…

You are reading WAY too much into it. We aren't that clever about naming at Cloudflare. Do you know how we named Wrangler, our local dev tool for Workers? Literally, the person that created it said: "I named this Wrangler because I wanted to give it a name so dumb that we definitely won't release it under that name and will come up with something better." We didn't come up with something better later. Honestly Cloudf…

Ah, my friend, I'm talking about the broader trend of people adding "OS" to the end of everything, not just Cloudflare. My apologies, I was not singling out Cloudflare here, but I see why you thought that! Cloudflare is very "on trend" I would say by using "OS", however.

FWIW, I am a sociotechnical specialist so I watch these things carefully.

Actually, I think Cloudflare OS quite possibly a good name for this case - especially with some of the history of coming from Sandstorm and what Sandstorm was trying to do for users. I super appreciate the background you shared about what you were doing here (and the secret master plan), and it makes complete sense to me actually.

I am also very sure of what I am saying about so many other things popping up with the "OS" tagged on - from both technical and non-technical use cases/companies.

I also appreciate your honesty about cleverness - LOL.. two hard things right? :)

Just as one example though of the larger trend I am watching, look at the launches on ProductHunt that have OS in the name (some are old, of course, but even in the last few weeks I've seen about 5 new things in this vein) [1].

I think this is a case of the hive mind actually coalescing around an idea (and even I was having the same idea), and I am not sure yet what the result will be, but my strong suspicion is some sort of new real operating system (potentially built with current OS foundations) that is built from AI-first principles, and a lot of other people trying to make it seem like their app is an "OS", either because they are using a nontechnical definition (or trying to piggyback on a technical one).

[1] https://www.producthunt.com/search/launches?q=OS

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#332

Post by SoftTalker »

> Thousands of people across every function, many of them outside of engineering, use it every day to create documents and slides, automate repeatable tasks, and build small apps to visualize data and help them do their work.

In other words we have convinced them to build their own replacements.

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#333

Post by richjdsmith »

philistine wrote: post #74
kentonv wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really struggled with how to present this to multiple audiences at once. My tweet thread, and the GitHub readme, is really the presentation intended for the HN crowd. The blog post is for a different audience. https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflare-os

> The blog post is for a different audience. No one? Like literally, I don't understand a thing of what the blog post is saying. It's vague to the point of meaning nothing. Every piece of text I've seen that explains CloudflareOS is clear except the blog post.

It certainly feels like the copywriters at cloudflare received marching orders to write for a broader audience, which means, write for no one. I miss their more technical writing style.

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#334

Post by sixdimensional »

fl4regun wrote: post #323
sixdimensional wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the subtle marketecture trick here they are doing.. Non-technical people don't always think of an OS as the computer OS. To them, sometimes it means more like standard operating procedure or process - a standard way of doing things. Secondly, for tech products, calling yourself an OS, you are associating yourself with things like Windows, Mac or Linux. You are indirectly trying to grandstand and positi…

>you are associating yourself with things like Windows, Mac or Linux But this is nothing like those things.

Yes - I agree - that is what I am trying to say in fact. But the association gets made because of the naming.

The only dictionary definition of "operating system" I see is like the technical one on Wikipedia [1], which IS more like Windows, Mac or Linux.. not like an app or platform.

From my concise Oxford English Dictionary, for example.. "operating system, n. the low-level software that supports a computer's basic functions".

Like, would it be better if it was just called the "Cloudflare App"? Or the "Cloudflare App Platform"? or the "Cloudflare Platform App"?

Those aren't clear winners either, they could easily be confused for product offerings or other things.

They could name it, like, "Cloudflare Rocket" (random product name) or "Cloudflare Jane" (e.g. personality) and then say, "this is the desktop app for Cloudflare Jane, which is a platform where we put all these tools and capabilities that combine with agentic powers".. but then it wouldn't have the marketing flair either.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#335

Post by ncr100 »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #216
philistine wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The blog post is for a different audience. No one? Like literally, I don't understand a thing of what the blog post is saying. It's vague to the point of meaning nothing. Every piece of text I've seen that explains CloudflareOS is clear except the blog post.

This matches my perception of a ton of recent Cloudflare blog posts. I literally have no idea who they are targeting. It almost feels like they're targeting themselves.

Curious if the tech writing team is drowning in work / underempowerment.

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#336

Post by ncr100 »

kentonv wrote: post #191
thehamkercat wrote: post #2

Why are companies slapping "OS" in their product naming? it's stupid

Mostly to get trolls to retweet and complain about it for free advertising. It's working. ;)

Is this a public-relations policy at Cloudflare?

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#337

Post by AmbroseBierce »

SoftTalker wrote: post #332

> Thousands of people across every function, many of them outside of engineering, use it every day to create documents and slides, automate repeatable tasks, and build small apps to visualize data and help them do their work. In other words we have convinced them to build their own replacements.

That's all it does, a more honest name for AI in the workplace would be to call it TYORT (train your own replacement technology) but companies don't want the soon-to-be replaced to be that much aware of what's happening.

Engineers love to talk about how AI is one the greatest invention in their lifetime but the data doesn't show that it has improved quality of life for humans even one bit -like many other inventions can claim- and actually it seems to be doing the opposite, where entry level jobs are vanishing, data centers worsen climate change, stress levels are all time high because workers (logically) believe they will soon be replaced, and on and on; in a very different social framework AI could have been a force for good, but not in this one, not how modern capitalism has shaped society to be.

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#338

Post by sixdimensional »

kentonv wrote: post #327
sixdimensional wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the subtle marketecture trick here they are doing.. Non-technical people don't always think of an OS as the computer OS. To them, sometimes it means more like standard operating procedure or process - a standard way of doing things. Secondly, for tech products, calling yourself an OS, you are associating yourself with things like Windows, Mac or Linux. You are indirectly trying to grandstand and positi…

You are reading WAY too much into it. We aren't that clever about naming at Cloudflare. Do you know how we named Wrangler, our local dev tool for Workers? Literally, the person that created it said: "I named this Wrangler because I wanted to give it a name so dumb that we definitely won't release it under that name and will come up with something better." We didn't come up with something better later. Honestly Cloudf…

P.S. And maybe not clever about naming at Cloudflare, but I'd say with high certainty, quite clever about technology!

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my comment, I appreciate all you do!

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#339

Post by encoderer »

fnoef wrote: post #24

"OS for work" - like, what does it mean? OS is operating system, it runs on a hardware and provides you to operate the system. I hate when companies destroy the English language with vibe invented terms.

Borrows from Business Operating System (BOS) - in use for decades.

Re: Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

#340

Post by lern_too_spel »

MattyRad wrote: post #257
arandomhuman wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow this is really poor justification for its name, the folks at cloudflare really should not be overloading the term "Operating System" pointlessly like this.

They even put it in quotes, because they know what they did. Maybe just take out the word "traditional" and be honest: "This is not an operating system. We're redefining the term because it is convenient for marketing."

It is standard English writing style to quote words you are talking about.
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