"Adam L. Beberg" <beberg@mithral.com> writes:
> > So far Endeavors hasn't licensed its technology, which embeds P2P
> > software in any machine with access to the Internet and in a Windows
> > environment.
>
> Has anyone? Everyone is too busy trying to lock everyone into their
> proprietary protocol and namespace because THAT is how you make money.
Not *everyone*. People who try to lock everyone into their
proprietary protocol and namespace will lose, because by doing so,
they are destroying value for their customers, not creating it. Folks
with open protocols and namespaces will win in the long run, because
the value of using the network is proportional to the number of other
users, and there will eventually be more users of open networks than
proprietary ones.
This argument got played out in the 1980s with PC hardware; the IBM PC
won, because it was open. It got played out in the later 1980s with
minicomputer and workstation OSes; Unix won, because it was
comparatively open. It got played out in the early 1990s with
computer networks; the Internet won, crushing all the proprietary
online services (except for AOL). It got played out in the late 1990s
with networked hypertext formats; the Web won. It's getting played
out now with PC and high-end embedded OSes; Linux is winning. And
it'll get played out again in the P2P software market, or whatever we
call it next year when we get tired of the "P2P" buzzword.
> > Kan said P2P will catch on as soon as people get over the notion that
> > information can only travel in one direction.
>
> Did someone suddenly remove all the NATs and firewalls and not tell me? Last
> I checked the net is becoming MORE one-directional every day.
C'mon, we have GNU httptunnel; we have ssh; we have isochronous HTTP;
we have IP tunneling over DNS. And more and more things are running
over HTTP every day. The Net is becoming more two-directional every
day, because that's what its users want, against the wishes of their
IT administrators.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:18:42 PDT