Strategy: Hardware? Software? Service? Partnership?

Let’s take a look at the players in the “smart phones” market: Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, RIM (blackberry),  Linux Mobile, and Palm. Sun used to have a Java Mobile but it seems to have dropped off the market, in terms of device market share. And then, there’s the new pretender to the crown in the form of Google, with its Android OS offering.

How do they stack up in terms of Hardware? Operating System? Service Offering? Well, here goes:

A first glance at this table seems to reflect some of the player’s pre-existing biases. Microsoft is known for its software business so that’s where it put the most weight; Google is all about free software to power their services; RIM and Palm do a hardware software combo; Apple throws its weight behind a fully Apple controlled experience.

However, there are a few caveats: For example, while Microsoft is in the space primarily as a software provider, it also owns Danger Inc., makers of the Hiptop. And while Palm has its own software, many of its devices are powered by Windows Mobile.

But apart from those exception areas, it appears that strategies are organized across four business models:

• OS only: This strategy is preferred by Sun and Linux. The model here is to provide an operating system that can be used by others. For Sun, this strategy has largely failed as substantially less than 1% of all handsets around the world is powered by their OS. Linux, which really was the first open source mobile OS has captured about 4 percent of the global smart phone market to date. Microsoft is the big leader in terms of that strategy, with its Windows Mobile OS currently powering about 12 percent of all smartphones around the globe.
• Software + Service: All this leaves us with Google and their Android offering. Much of the commenting today is that the move Nokia just made was aimed at the fact that Google had an “open” operating system. But what Google is really trying to do is provide an operating system that melds OS and services. Either that or they are in the OS only camp. Either way, they are not playing in the same space as the iPhone or Nokia (see triple play below).
• Hardware + Software: This model is preferred by RIM, makers of the Blackberry, and Palm (especially with their inexpensive Palm Centro line). This strategy works best if you want your device to be focused on few use scenarios: The blackberry is first and foremost a portable email station; Palm devices are first and foremost PDAs. This orientation comes from a past where the device wasn’t initially intended as a phoe but morphed into one.
• The triple play (ie hardware/software/service): This is the strategy currently used by Apple with the iPhone: they provide the hardware, the software, and a set of services (me.com, iTunes, Software store) on a complete package.  Through recent acquisitions, Nokia has been moving in this direction: while they were traditionally a hardware player, they started adding services to their devices. With today’s announcement, they’re also getting some control over software.

So looking at this, it becomes apparent that while many are pointing to Nokia going after Google, it may not be the target. Since Nokia does service and hardware already, getting more control over its own OS is probably an important move.

Open Sourcing

I can already hear some readers snickering: Symbian’s been open-sourced so Nokia does not have control. Let me make something very clear: the gold rule (“he who’s got the gold makes the rule”) applies to Open Source as it does in other areas. While it won’t get exclusivity, Nokia, having paid $400+ million to open source Symbian will be considered “more equal than others” by the Symbian foundation, I’m sure.

But why open source? If we look at the players mentioned above, their position on open source and their market share, the picture becomes clearer:

Looking at the market share date, Nokia’s move doesn’t seem to make sense: They currently control 65 percent of the market, why would they bother? But here’s the thing: There’s this newcomer called Apple and they didn’t exist 18 months ago: they now have 7 percent of the market and are growing.

If I’m a Nokia executive and I’m looking at this data, I start worrying. So what do I do? I look at competitive advantage: initially, I try to compete with cooler devices (the Nseries) and while it stops some of the bleeding, it doesn’t appear to fully halt the competition. So I start looking at services as a way to stabilize revenue (Maps, Music, Games) but that doesn’t stick. Then I realize that my problem is the operating system: I’m stuck with that alliance of partners I have but they’re slowing me down. So I have to take over. But I can’t do that by just kicking all of them out. So I acquire and open source.

The open source move fills three strategic objectives:

• I get to keep partners still involved but get them to agree to my taking charge.
• I get other people to improve my code and/or developing FOR it, thus allowing me to counter a potential Google threat if it ever materializes.
• I get to look more “open” than Apple and will use that in my messaging

The Future: Collateral Damage Then Status Quo

Of course, while it works out great for Nokia, there is a little bit of collateral damage:

• Sun’s offering, while interesting had already sunk largely into irrelevancy so they’re no longer a player.
• Palm OS, was teetering on the edge but now it’s pretty much cooked.
• Linux, while still having teeth, will probably see its market share dwindle as its unique selling proposition (more open than others) is gone.

So that’s unfortunate but what does it do to the rest of the market. Well, in fact, it looks like today’s events wont’ have much impact: Palm, Linux and Sun represent about 5 percent of the market. With Apple at 7%, RIM at 11%, Microsoft at 12% and Nokia at 65%, it looks like the market will stay pretty consistent. The remaining 5% will be carved out by the existing players and by Google’s entry into the market. Nokia will remain at the top for now.

Potential events that could have a more disruptive effect: a Microsoft/RIM partnership (or outright acquisition) which, when integrated would give Windows Mobile a 23% market share. But short of such a move, it looks like the situation will mostly stay at status quo for the time being.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title No Changes in Mobile. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Looking at the history

In order to look forward, it always pays to look back. The dominant standards for the web today are undeniably HTML (or its variances like XHTML) and HTTP. More recently, XML has emerged and, increasingly, RSS is becoming the dominant type of XML for sharing a variety of data.

How did each of those standards become a standard. It is obvious now (hindsight is always 20/20) that standards bodies have relatively little bearing when it comes to influencing the succes of a format. Take, for example, SGML, which was the dominant standardized format for document formatting. It was quickly superceded by HTML which, at the time, was not considered a standard.

The same is true of RSS and other standards for syndication. Formats like ICE, CDF, and NewsML were touted as the future when they were first introduced. However, they’ve recently been superceded by RSS.

And even within the RSS world, formats like RSS 1.0, which was supposed to be more semantically sound, and ATOM, which was supposed to be more forward thinking that RSS 2.0, have been losing the war to RSS 2.0.

Bootstrapping is a social phenomenon

What Dave Winer understood, when he sheperded RSS 2.0 into becoming the dominant mean of delivering syndicated content is that the life and death of a new format is predicated on its widespread adoption. And, in order to increase adoption, one has to make something generic, easy to understand, and simple.

Many of the people in the early days of the syndication space failed to see it as Dave did. We believed that a semantically sound format was better and we were wrong. Purity, it turns out is not always a good thing, especially if it gets in the way of people implementing something.

The same is true of HTML. I’d venture that, from a development standpoint, the biggest boost to HTML was a single menu feature that appeared in early browsers and remains there to this day: view source. In the early days of the web, countless developers learned how to do cool things with HTML by reading the source of pages designed by other people.

In a recent issue of ambidextrous magazine, Jeffrey Schox talks about the three stages of technological development: appropriation, early innovation, and sustainable innovation. Here’s how he describes the appropriation stage:

an issued pattent allows innovators to construct roadblocks behind them as they travel down a particular technological path… During the appropriation stage, patent roadblocks waste time and money… The countries, needing to catch up with the designs and technologies of other countries, should focus on collecting revenue and knowledge streams to fuel later stages of technology development.

While he focuses on hardware and electronics in a globalized marketplace, the same truth can be applied to standards. With few barriers in adopting a new standard and by fostering a culture of appropriation, one can easily establish a base of people who understand a new format. As more people understand it, they start implementing it and, after eventually getting smarter about it, start building on the efforts of previous creators. Eventually, those masses of tinkerers get to a critical point, pushing the new format into areas that were unexpected. Some companies eventually get smart to it and see growth in that area, which triggers them into experimenting with that new format.

Eventually, due to a general agreement among all developers, the format becomes a de facto standard. It does not have to have the imprimatur of a standard body (except for some very late adopters or pockets where such imprint is considered important) and moves forward.

What is interesting is the next stage, the one where standard bodies see the area as hot and decide that they need to play in that field. A good example of that is the ATOM format, which has been enshrined into an IETF approved format, and to date has failed to stop the RSS 2.0 juggernaut.

So what happened?

The amazing thing is how simple the issue is. The reason RSS 2.0 has been winning is that it has developed a following. With every new developer learning RSS 2.0, the format goes stronger and the same is true of every company implementing it. Because it is simple, it’s easy to pick up, which means that new developers can do interesting things with it relatively quickly, giving them a chance to become active members of the community and therefore become hooked on it.

The other issue is in keeping things relatively open, while still maintaining some level of control over the general direction. A successful future standard has to allow people a chance to contribute but, in the end, it also needs some gatekeepers who decide what goes in and what doesn’t. The same truth can be applied to any sofware development cycle: for example, Linux may be a widespread open source phenomenon but the number of people who decide what goes into the core kernel or doesn’t is still relatively limited. The same is true of any successful open source project: some level of centralized decision making and distribution of the work: anyone can contribute but not every contribution makes it into the final product.

I’m now seeing some of the same history repeat itself in the OPML space. It’s a format that is very simple and Dave is working very hard on getting people left and right to support it. It’s the same scenario he’s used to bootstrap the RSS format and to bootstrap concepts like blogging and podcasting into the mainstream. It’s a formula that works: keep it simple to implement, maintain some level of centralized control over the roadmap and then evangelize it left and right until it can no longer be stopped.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Standards as social contracts. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Making the Decision

The first, and probably toughest, part of this migration was to actually make the jump. This site, and every bit on it, is something I’ve carefully crafted over the years. Up to recently, I could proudly say that every piece of code on the site was something I had written myself. It was a point of pride and, while blog software was still new, it was also a way to experiment and go deep into the code. Over the years, though, software platforms have gotten more and more complex and my own code failed to keep up.

The second part of the decision in making the jump was also due to my focus on spending more time writing. However, this was balanced by my need to tinker with the code. As time went on, it became more and more difficult to figure out where I wanted to experiment.

Last but not least in that decision was the fact that everything I was building was my own but not something I could really share with anyone. Time and time again, people asked me how I implemented a particular feature on my blog and I had no way to deal with this than to pass the whole code, ugly commenting and all, to them.

Last month, the main drive on TNL.net crashed, something that appeared like a disaster at the time but was really a blessing in disguise. Having to rebuild the box, I decided that it was time for a massive upgrade. First, I would upgrade the operating system (TNL.net had been languishing on an old version of Redhat Linux 7.3 for so many years due to some bad system design decisions I made when I moved to Linux a few years ago). Having done so, I also decided to upgrade the web server (to Apache 2.0), the database (to MYSQL 5) and the programming language (to PHP 5). It was a major upgrade and, as is the case with every major upgrade, things started to break. I spent a considerable amount of time bringing things back up and reintroducing tweaks that had built up over several years. It was then that I realized that maybe a different approach was needed.

Who are the contenders?

Having decided that I would upgrade the blog to someone else’s software, I had to establish what factors I would consider when building the new site. From there, I built a quick list:

• The software I would take had to be something I could tweak: While I’m leaving my existing code base behind, I still want to have some level of control over what goes on under the covers.
• The software I would use had to be open source. My reasoning for this is that open source not only means free but it also means that I am not worried about control issues further down the road. So any changes that I make and then redistribute doesn’t fall under some kind of corporate legal entity and therefore (fingers crossed) I won’t have to worry about legal issues relating to my amendments.
• The software would have to be extensible through some type of plug-ins or module infrastructure.
• The software would have to be written in PHP and use MYSQL because those are technologies I’m familiar with and I didn’t feel like learning something new.
• The software would have to match the features I had running in my existing blog.

Having those requirements made the choice considerably easier, as it left only two major contenders: Drupal and WordPress. In the end, I decided on WordPress for purely visual reason: the admin interface just struck me as much more polished so I went with it. Drupal had a geekier feel to it but WordPress felt like a more finished product (and here, I may show some bias for interface).

Starting the migration

The first step in migrating things to move over was to figure out what I needed to migrate. One of things I wanted to ensure was that any upgrade would have little or no impact on the overall feel of the site. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time tweaking TNL.net so it did not necessarily feel like a blog and so that the user experience was always as optimized as possible, allowing people to get to any content within only a few clicks.

First Challenge: Look & Feel

This presented some challenges: the first challenges was in keeping the interface consistent. Most blog packages come with a set of skins or themes that are used by beginning users. I, however, set out on a path to change the whole look and feel to mirror exactly (pixel perfect) the previous look of the site. This sent me down the path of theme development for WordPress and I spent many hours learning about the internals of the system in order to make it do what I wanted it to.

The other look and feel challenge was in the URL structure of the site. For years, the URL structure on TNL.net has not changed however, I’ve always been bugged by some of the limitations I had created for myself. For example, entries could not have the same title because I had created a system that prevented me from being able to do so. It seemed clever at the time but turned out to be a major design flaw. As a result, the URLs for every entry sat at roughly the root of the site. I wanted to make sure that any Google juice or other types of linkage would not break so I had to write my own routine to redirect pages correctly. This ensured that the URL structure of old could still remain.

Second Challenge: Data structure

In the process of writing my own blog, I defined my own data structure. I wanted to ensure that it would be followed in WP but it took some tweaking to get everything to map correctly. However, thanks to the RSS importing feature, I was able to import most of the old entries without problems. This, once again, was to ensure that continuity would remain unbroken and that the site would still function as it always did.

However, a second challenge was in importing comments. I’m still trying to figure that one out as I’m working on importing all the comments back into the new system. They’re temporarily offline but they will come back.

Third Challenge: RSS feeds

A substantial amount of TNL.net reader never visit the site: they get it via RSS. This presented a new challenge as I wanted to ensure that they would remain mostly undisturbed through this transition. In the process, though, I decided to move to a new model that would ensure they never have to worry about such URL changes. I redirected all the feeds to new URLs (http://feeds.tristanlouis.com/TNLnet for the excerpts feed and http://feeds.tristanlouis.com/TNLFull for the full entry feed) which are now powered by FeedBurner, allowing me to get a better understanding of who my readers are while helping migrate them from one platform to another. In a sense, FeedBurner is now serving as a migration tool while at the same time providing me with a new URL schema that I could take anywhere I want.

Conclusion: A pretty seamless transition

All and all, while it was some work to get most everything working, the transition has been pretty good so far. I’ve gained a fair number of new features and am still exploring how the system works. It seems to be much more feature rich than any code base I developed so that’s another great relief. On the downside, I feel a little sad to let go of a large chunk of code powering the site (the TNL.net blog was powered by a 90k PHP file which will soon be cleaned up). I’m still considering adapting the old code to deal with the front end of TNL.net but, all and all, it looks like WordPress will be my blogging tool of choice… until I decide to switch again.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title On the WordPress move. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

In order to understand the impact, one has to understand how Microsoft used to work. In the past, Microsoft was all about protecting two key platforms: Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. As both tools represent the bread makers of the company, ensuring strong revenue while they try to go after markets, the Redmond giant was loath to do anything that could potentially help competitors in any way. As a result, they closely protected their own ecosystem and worked hard on spreading a message that essentially said that using other operating system was bad for your business.

With this announcement, we may see a new Microsoft: one that is open to the realities of the marketplace. Linux is not going away and Microsoft knows it so, instead of trying to fight it head on, the company has decided to take its embrace and extend attitude and wrap its arms around the operating system.

This is both a blessing and a potential threat to Linux vendors. Computing history shows that when Microsoft embraces a competitor, that competitor may need to start rethinking its strategy.

The first step, beyond announcing support for Linux, is creating a team focused on Linux. From their announcement:

Microsoft is committed to providing a positive customer experience when running supported Linux operating systems as guests in Virtual Server 2005 R2. Therefore, the product support model for these configurations will be consistent with existing customer support for Virtual Server products. Customers who report interoperability issues with Linux guests or virtual machine add-ins will be routed to a team that is specially trained to troubleshoot issues related to Linux guests within Virtual Server 2005 R2.

What we are seeing here is nothing short of a major revolution at Microsoft. By having some people fully dedicated to supporting Linux, the company will gain a deep competitive knowledge of what works and what doesn’t with Linux servers.

As a result of that acknowledgment, Windows is now going to evolve to better counter the threat of Linux. While Redmond was large in denial as to the power of Linux, the message is now that they are taking it heads on, using code instead of rhetoric to fight it.

Linux fans may be rejoicing at the news but I would take a more careful approach and say beware. In 1997, Microsoft carefully embraced Java. What followed was the quick death of Java as a front end technology, forcing Sun to reposition it as a back-end coding technology. While Java has thrived, Sun was forced to reposition it in order to make it thrive. Few Windows programmers switched to Java and Microsoft managed to protect its own investment in Visual Basic, building a lot of Java-like functionality in its development tools and then introducing tools that could stay competitive while integrating with Windows, thus protecting the Microsoft ecosystem.

The question that Linux developers will have to ask themselves is where the benefits of this Microsoft embrace lie. While it may look like a capitulation, it may just be a strategic shift in their offensive. By gaining a deeper understanding of the value of Linux (and, if you look at the versions of Linux they are supporting, price is not really the competitive threat they are trying to counter but features seem to be as all the supported products are paid ones) and building it in their future offerings.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this relationship evolves. I see two potentially different scenarios coming out of this:

• Microsoft increases its embrace of Linux and is genuinely interested in being more open, thus allowing them to sell products that work in a more mixed environment, which would help them get into areas in which they are weak, thus increasing potential sell of the new “good citizen” Windows version. This could stem from Microsoft’s realization that their biggest competitive threat is not coming from the outside but from the inside: existing versions of Windows may be good enough for most people so, to ensure upgrades to future version, Microsoft needs to evolve the market to an area where they play well with others.
• The other, darker, scenario, would be one where Microsoft embraces and extends Linux in the future. It would first discover what makes Linux a better sell than Windows and incorporate Linux-like functionality in their OS, thus reducing the potential threat. Once it matches features, the company would then present all the advantages of Windows in terms of installed base and use that as leverage to impede the growth of Linux.

I don’t yet know which of these scenarios the company will follow but it will be interesting to see how this develops. I hope that the first one, with Microsoft being genuine in its acknowledgment of new realities and becoming more open, is what they are shooting for but past history has told another story. Only time will tell whether they can truly move forward and become a more open company and if that happens, this moment will be seen as a historical shift not only in Microsoft history but in computing history as a whole.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Microsoft Does Linux. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

The 5-years outlook

The interesting thing is the timing of the move, a bit over 10 years from the move from 680x processors to PowerPC and a big over 5 years from the transition from MacOS to OSX.

In 1994, the company decided to abandon some of the more proprietary components of its hardware architecture and move to a more “open” hardware architecture, using models similar to what was then available in the PC world. At the time, the transition was largely seen as just a processor transition but it was a much larger move to more open hardware architectures.

Then, in 2000, the transition started from the proprietary MacOS to a more open Unix-based operating system. Once again this was seen as an Apple only move and mostly seen as a simple migration.

Today, the company announced that it was moving from PowerPC to Intel-based x86 processors, a move that leaves open more questions than it answers.

However, it shows a clear trend in the company’s approach to change: Every 5 years or so, the company makes a move towards more openness. I’m assuming that, at this rate, Apple will make a decision to either move to a more open platform (notice in today’s announcement that they did not announce they would be available on hardware beyond Apple’s own hardware) or ditch the operating system and work on being a hardware company with a few Windows-based (and/or linux based) software products. This decision, in my view, will be announced in either 2010 or 2011.

The short term outlook

I would say that, short term (under 5 years), the move will be towards introducing an Intel-based laptop running OSX. Basically, the G5 laptop is not just not happening this year, it’s as dead the famous Monty Python parrot. However, the Apple Intel laptop is coming and it will probably be one of the first item they introduce under the new line.

The next thing that we’re going to see is a new price drop in some of the hardware. Expect more of the iMac line to trend down price wise. I suspect Apple will use the iMac line as a value line with prices ranging from $399 to $1000 for desktop and from $999 to $1500 for laptops. However, they will probably bring to market a higher end line of pro (or prosumer) devices. This strategy might help them grow their marketshare.

Third, expect Motorola/Freescale to be the first one to suffer. The transition, on the desktop, will probably start with the G4 line and then be followed, later, with the G5.

Fourth, expect Apple to announce a new version of their server and a new version of OSX running on either Intel x86 processor or Transmeta chips (technically, one could assume it’s possible).

And what about the lawsuits?

A few months ago, some blogs leaked information about upcoming Apple products and Apple filed suits to find who their sources were. Last week, the Wall Street Journal and Cnet leaked info about this move to Intel and… well, I guess Apple must have decided to stop suing people or maybe they are just reserving lawsuits for bloggers.

Update

: A helpful reader pointed out that I had argued in favor of the switch last year.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Apple moves to Intel. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Freshness vs. Convenience vs. Value

When watching movies, I have several options. I can

• Go to the movie theater
• Wait for the movie to be available on video or DVD and rent it
• Wait for the movie to be available on video or DVD and buy it
• Wait for a movie to show up on pay-per-view and rent it
• Wait for the movie to be available online legally and download it
• Wait for the movie to show up on free TV and watch it or record it then
• Download it illegally

Those are basically all the options I have. Let’s examine what the drivers behind a particular choice my be:

• Freshness: I want access to the latest movie as soon as it’s viewable
• Convenience: I want to watch the movie where and when I decide
• Value: I want to pay a fair price for the entertainment value I get out of that movie

If we start mapping each of those against the currently available options, patterns emerge: In order to get freshness, I have to sacrifice convenience (since I have to go to the movie theater and watch the movie at a set time) and pay a value premium (since I have to pay the price of a movie ticket, which also gives me access to a larger screen, better sound, and a shared experience). In order to get convenience (download, rent, or buy), I have to give up freshness (as movies are released in theater first and available in other media later) and pay a little extra (price of rental or purchase) than I would if I waited for the movie to be free on television. Last but not least, if I want to watch the movie for free legally, I have to give up freshness (since movies are released to TV stations at the tail end of the release cycle), deal with less convenience (I either have to record the movie or watch it on the station’s time and date and, if I want the completely free option, I have to agree to watching some ads in the middle of the movie) . If I’m willing to break the law, I have to give up convenience (have to hunt down the movie on a peer to peer network, then make sure the download works properly, then check that no virus has been embedded. To add to the problem, the quality of “fresh” movies available over those free networks is generally bad, with sound and image generally being of low quality.

DRM can be good

Now imagine a system where I could get all three. A system that I would call “FairShare.” In a FairShare system, I get access to everything for the right price and with maximum convenience. If a new movie is released, I can pay a premium to have it immediately available in my house on the same day as it is available in the theater but here’s the catch: I have to pay for that extra convenience. So I may have to pay more for that movie than if I went out to see it in the theater but I get the convenience to play it at home on my own clock. How much would I pay for that convenience? Well, it depends. Part of the pricing here is the value equation: do I want to watch it alone at home or am I having a party with friends. Is this a movie I really want to see now or can it wait a week, a month, or longer. Can I haggle over the price?

That last part is important. Looking at the Ebay economy, we can now figure that there are certain price points for just about anything and that those price points, when left to the customer to decide, are generally within a standard deviation of the actual price of an item. What if there were marketplaces for movie download rights? Let’s take a highly anticipated release (the next Star Wars, for example). Some people would probably be willing to pay a high premium in order to see it at home with their friends? Just looking at the US box office returns for Episode 2, Attack of the Clones one clearly sees the importance of freshness: The movie made $110 million in its first week (bolstered by a first weekend take of $80 million), $90 million in its second week, and $31 million in its third week. That means people would have been willing to pay a premium to see the movie in week one and two but less of one in week 3.

Once the price has been set, it then only become a question of proper DRM licenses being available. For example, I use a service called Movielink. It’s got a collection of movies that can be downloaded for anywhere between 99 cents and 5 dollars. In that price range, the movies are about the cost of a video. However, I don’t have to worry about returning them and, while choice is currently limited, it’s pretty convenient. Granted, I’m not the regular user in that I already have a computer connected to my big screen television, but the convenience is worth the price.

I think I could technically make a copy of a movie I download and give it to a friend. What would happen when they run it? Well, the same thing that happened to me recently. I wanted to rewatch one of the movies I rented and had watched previously. When I went to start it, a screen popped up, asking me if I wanted to re-enable rights for 24 hours at a substantial discount (99 cents vs. the $4.99 I had previously pay for the rental). Had I rented that movie in the video store instead and wanted to go through the same experience, I would have paid for the price of a rental twice. Once I started using the service, I noticed it also altered my buying pattern. When I rented a movie I liked, I might buy it on DVD if I wanted to play it more than once. The cost of a DVD generally is between 10 and 20 dollars. However, when I started downloaded, the replay for 99 cents feature started to make the cost of buying a DVD look expensive by comparison. While I do replay movies I bought, I don’t replay them often enough to warrant a 20 dollar price point (that would be equivalent to replaying a moving I downloaded 15 times.)

What happens here is that the product is priced properly and even competitively, compared to other alternatives. In a FairShare model, those prices would vary and all movies, either still in theater or released decades ago, would be available at prices that would fluctuate based on demand. For example, movies from 1890 may not be very popular but I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of people around the world who might want to watch those. At a couple of dollars a piece (or local currency equivalent), that’s thousands of dollars left on the table. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands and you’re talking about potentially billions of dollars left on the table by business and potentially tens of thousands of gems that are currently unavailable to the public.

Shopping for legal music

Of course, all this works because I am dealing with a single device and a single model. However, DRM becomes evil when it is limiting and tries to tell me what to do and where I should do it (hence reducing my convenience). For this, I will bring up another example. I recently heard a music album that sounded good. Now, in the post napster, free-music-for-all, world we live in, I could have easily downloaded it from a P2P network and kept it at that. For my own enlightenment, I decided to actually look for the album (not a single track but the whole album) on one of the P2P networks, confirming a suspicion I had: Popular tracks do show up on those networks but less popular tracks from an album do not. As a result, it is impossible to get a good feeling for an artist’s work beyond the hits.

My curiosity satisfied, I decided I would go and try to buy the album from a downloadable service. Before I go any further, let me explain what I expect from tracks purchased online: I own several computers running several operating systems (OSX, several versions of Microsoft Windows, and Linux, primarily); I also own a Treo, which I use as my portable MP3 player. Why that device in particular? Because it combines my GSM phone, PDA, and MP3 player all in one and can hook up to the different operating systems I mentioned above. It’s the ultimate in choice and portability as I do not want to carry multiple single-use dedicated devices.

First stop was the iTunes music store, which frequent TNL.net readers will recognize as the target of many posts. Well, turns out that it might be a bit of an issue. Apple doesn’t seem very interested in selling music to play on non-iPod devices and as far as transferring a song to Linux, well… I guess I’ll have to wait for the Linux version of iTunes which should come out just around the same time as blizzards blowing through Hades.

Next stop, Real. After all, they made a big stink a while back about fighting Apple and protecting openness. They’ll help me, right? Looked like the Treo would work but I was annoyed to learn that you had to use the RealPlayer to play the tracks. Where was the freedom of choice in that? Why would I be forced to install their player in order to play the tracks? What if they went under and their player were no longer compatible with my operating system? In one felt swoop, they eliminated a whole bunch of stores to visit: basically, the ones that force me into using the Real player in order to play music I bought legally.

Warily, I approached, the remaining giant in the space: Microsoft. The good news was that they had a program called “Plays for Sure”. Finally, someone willing to go with a real guarantee that my music will play anywhere! The tag line, right there on the homepage said it all:

Choose your music. Choose your device. Know it’s going to work.

That sounded really great: finally my music, my Treo, my different operating systems would all work harmoniously… except for the fact that PlaysForSure is another marketing name for Windows Media Player. Basically, it’s the same deal as Real: if you use their player, and their player works on the device you want to use, it’s OK. Otherwise, you’re on your own.

I gave up on the online download sites and bought the CD, which I then ripped to MP3 tracks myself.

DRM can be evil

What happened in that case was a case of what I would consider evil DRM, where the consumer is treated as a criminal by default. Because it is assumed that I will abuse my right, the system forces me to work within a walled garden. I can either get my content from Apple on Apple devices, from Microsoft (and partners) on Microsoft powered devices, or from Real (and partners) on devices that run the RealPlayer. This is not choice, it’s entrapment. If I were to follow the same logic to the extreme, I would have to have a different television in order to watch different TV channels. In other words, the case of music downloads shows that DRM can be mis-directed. Why? Simply because of companies trying to maintain certain monopolies and force the users to do their bidding.

DRM dependencies

Looking at the two scenarios above, you might start noticing some interesting trends. First of all, DRM is situational. A single DRM strategy does not fit all offerings. Why is that?

I would venture that the reason is one of expectation. The expectation that I have of a music track are different that the expectation that I have of a movie or TV show and it is largely related to the interaction with each media type. In the case of a music track, I want something that will be portable and can move relatively quickly from one device to another; this is largely due to the fact that music is consumed on the run, and more often than not, it is consumed while doing some other activity. Movie or TV watching, however, is something that requires more involvement; it’s hard to read a book, drive, or run while watching a movie or TV show! As a result, mobility is not as essential and the need for a movie to run on multiple device is not as high. if it runs on my TV, maybe on a laptop too and can be transferred to a secondary TV, it’s OK. The universe of devices on which it needs to run is smaller and generally more tied into the net anyway, which makes the DRM interaction more seamless.

What I am trying to highlight is that while proponents and opponents of DRM solutions both see the world in black and white, they may want to start a dialogue and realize that there’s a lot of gray areas out there.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title DRM is not binary. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Voice Over IP

VoIP experienced tremendous growth in 2004 but it was just the beginning. This year, much more will happen in that space.

Cable providers will start deploying VoIP services on their networks and phone companies will start bundling VoIP services with their DSL offering as a way to compete. By year end, all major broadband providers, whether they are offering services over cable or DSL lines, will have a VoIP service bundled with their access service.

Unable to compete with the larger telcos, some smaller players in the market will merge on order to lower their cost per subscriber by bringing their infrastructures together. Also, independent VoIP companies will sign peering agreement with each other in order to bypass traditional telcos and lower the cost of connectivity from one independent VoIP company to another.

Further pressure will be put on all players on the American market as overseas companies will start targeting U.S. customers. Before year-end, at least one company will offer an unlimited calling to several countries plan. Other plans will provide unlimited calling to each continent. This will start putting pressure on established government monopolies in several countries, especially in Europe.

VoIP will also experience strong growth within the enterprise, with companies looking to open-source solutions like Asterisk to replace their PBX infrastructure with a lower cost alternative.

As all this happens, equipment will not only become cheaper but will also become much easier to use and install. Along with it, new sets will come out, with cordless VoIP offerings becoming much more common. Competition in this space will be on features available in new handsets.

With substantial portions of the phone network switching to VoIP, video telephony will start taking hold. However, the price of equipment will still be too high for those services to experience the kind of growth other sectors in the VoIP market will experience.

Entertainment Convergence

The convergence of the computer and other entertainment forms (television, radio, gaming, mobile phones) will continue, further blurring the lines in the convergence world.

With broadband now being the major way to access the Internet in the United States, Internet usage for new forms of entertainment will grow. Along with it, however, will be a continuing challenge to the established media order.

The challenges faced by the music industry with the introduction of Napster will now be the new reality for the movie and television industry. Five years ago, I started seeing the phenomenon emerge and believe the four step process of the digital asset dance will be full blown for the MPAA this year. The MPAA will spend part of the year suing companies and users for downloading movies. However, they are also better prepared that the music industry in that they are already offering legal download services like MovieLink.

While litigation will be one of the ways convergence appears on the front page, many providers will find a way to mine this new world for new dollars. Expect some companies to start offering legal download of television programs for a fee. As the Internet becomes the standard telecommunication infrastructure, content will start getting carried more heavily. Phone companies will start using this to offer bundle TV services with their DSL offering as a way to compete with the cable TV companies that have invaded the telecom turf. Before year end, at least one traditional telco will offer TV over IP. All that content will be protected by DRM systems, getting people more and more used to having less and less rights over the content they receive.

Meanwhile, on the wireless end, the introduction of more powerful mobile phones and the introduction of faster mobile phone networks will also play out in the favor of content producers. As voice traffic revenues continue to decrease, expect mobile phone companies to push data services such as downloadable movies and downloadable music more heavily. By year, MP3 will be the standard format for cellphones and Apple will offer a mobile phone version of the iTunes music store, allowing users to download music from the store and customize their phone with the latest hits.

On the non-Internet end of things, video on demand will continue the strong growth it experienced in 2004 and more programming will be offered in HDTV format, prompting an increase in sales of televisions and tuners that can receive those signals. Meanwhile, radio will follow the path taken by cable television in the early 80s. As satellite radio takes hold as the new “edgier” alternative to traditional radio, people will get more used to the idea of paying for radio. However, they will also require that those services be offered over the Internet as well as over the proprietary networks like XM and Sirius.

But not all content will be coming from big corporations. The grassroots will also play a key role in the distribution of online media in 2005. While podcasting has been the domain of a few geeks in 2004, easier to use tool will bring the phenomenon to the forefront and expect more audio services to be available from regular users. Following on the tail of this phenomenon will be an increase in videocasting from individuals. Much of it will be disappointing but a few gems will emerge, creating new stars who will emerge from the Internet and move on to more traditional media, based on the fame of their online offerings.

Business

Mergers and acquisitions will dominate the software world this year, as more companies realize that the only way into the enterprise is through a complete set of offerings. Expect several multi-billion dollar mergers and/or acquisition. In my mind, McAfee will be acquired or merge with either Symantec or CA; SAP will be acquired by Microsoft; Business Objects will be acquired by Oracle. As holds true for such precise predictions, none of this will actually happen the way I predicted it.

In late 2004, IBM left the personal computer business, selling its unit to Lenovo, a Chinese manufacturer. Expect the same to happen to at least one other PC vendor this year as the margins on personal computers continue to decrease, turning them into commodities.

Apple

Apple, which to date has resisted the price pressures other computer manufacturers have experienced, will introduce a cheaper version of their Macintosh. This, however, will not stem the continuing loss of market share they are experiencing. As Linux continues to grow, the Apple story in the computer business becomes more and more difficult and the company will increasingly rely on the consumer device business as its savior, building a new economy around the success of the iPod and iTunes music store.

The company will not, however, release a video player this year. Among some of the new features I would envision coming from Apple are:

• A flash-based iPod, which will be even smaller than the iPod mini and will be in the $100-$150 price range
• A partnership with a phone company to create a phone that will be able to download music from a special version of the iTunes music store and play MP3 ringtones
• An iPod with audio recording built-in
• A portable camera with iPod-like features
• A new way to send pictures from the iPod directly to printer via Airport express

While it focuses on the music business, Apple will not spend much time updating its laptop business. Adoption will drop in that part of the business as PC vendors start selling sub-$500 laptop PCs, making the iBook look expensive by comparison. Apple will try to enter the low cost market but not with a laptop: they will introduce a mac without monitor for under $500, offering integration with the iPod, and plugs to attach the computer to a television as its major features.

On the software end, the company will introduce a Word Processor and Spreadsheet program. They will release them, along with Keynote, as a complete package named iWork which will be aimed at students and small businesses. The package will be available for free on new computers.

Development

Blogs and RSS will continue their growth and will move strongly within the enterprise space. Adoption of RSS will continue its explosive growth but crest in 2005 as users start trying to find ways to cope with the information overload. New components in RSS readers will attempt to help organize RSS feeds but those basic efforts will initially fail and discussions will be set towards the end of the year as to the effective way to organize large amounts of data.

Weblogs and content management systems will start covering some of the same ground and enterprise will start using weblogs internally at the departmental level. Meanwhile, external employee weblogs will start becoming the focus of more litigations as corporation try to retain their intellectual property and fight the kind of transparency that comes from having employees talk openly on the web. Internal rules and regulations will be set in how employees can use blogs.

Meanwhile, in the development world, Service Oriented Architectures will continue being the approach to delivering next generation services. SOA will grow largely internally but some companies will start exposing some web services via XML to their partners. A new set of interesting new applications will come out as a result of those exposures.

Security and trust will continue to be big subjects and I suspect that trust will become an even bigger one with new standards emerging around the concept but no general agreement as to the best implementation.

Open source software will continue its strong growth, getting into more and more specialized fields. With the delays in delivery of Microsoft’s next operating system, Linux will continue to grow but complaints about price will start to arise. While the open source movement has offered free software, there will continue to be an increase in the price of supported version of the software.

Personal

I’ll promise to update the blog more often, will do OK for a little while and will then fall back into my regular pattern of a couple of updates a week. Or not… Either way, only the new year will tell.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title 2005 Predictions. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

I know mac users will probably flame me for this but I believe that the direct result of this is the need for Apple to start taking a serious look at more of a cross-platform approach. Before you send me irate emails, however, realize that I am a mac user (we have several macs at home and I use an iBook as my primary machine, largely due to the small footprint factor (there are previous few 10 inch screen computers in this world and I am among the list of oddballs that prefer that form factor when it comes to portables)) and that I only want to see the best for Apple, a company that exudes coolness when it comes to marketing and design but one that may be losing the war in the consumer space.

Why I feel now is the time for Apple to consider a change

Over the past few years, Apple has made great headways in the music business, first with the iPod, which now holds a substantial lead over all of its competitors, and later with the iTunes Music Store, which has solidified the company’s position in the emerging world of digital music. Much of that success, I believe, stems from a smart decision to look beyond the mac and start offering like-for-like products on the windows platform. First, it was an iPod that could work with Windows, and then it was iTunes for Windows. Historically, Apple has had many successes on the Windows platform. Look, for example, at the success of Quicktime, which still represents a dominating force in the world of digital video. I believe the embrace of either Windows or Intel as a platform (in the examples I’ve given, it is the combination of both) always benefits Apple as a company. Every time Apple has offered a product on those platforms, it’s been successful. Let’s look at different combinations and the advantages and/or pitfalls of that approach.

Apple and Intel

It’s hardly a secret that Apple has switched CPU providers in the past. While their relationship with Motorola sustained them through the 80s and 90s, the move to the G5 architecture showed a willingness to switch provider. In that case, the provider became IBM, ie. the other provider of PowerPC chip. Who’s to say that Apple could not start holding discussion with Intel, looking to them as a provider of chips for their platform?

One of the possible combination here would be to port the Mac OSX operating system to the Intel platform. The bottom line would be a new market for Apple software product and a third alternative to Windows and Linux on the Intel platform. Darwin, the underlying core of OSX, is based on BSD. It has already been ported to the Intel platform and BSD itself has a rich history of distributions running on Intel processor.

The advantage of this approach is that it would make OSX available to a much wider public. This could translate into higher software sales for Apple (which provides a more end-user focused product than Linux at this time and a more secure product than Windows at this time) and could allow for a rise in the number of developers for the OSX platform as the potential of a larger market could enlarge the whole eco-system. One could foresee a time when iLife would be offered on that platform and Apple could use this as a seed for their new product offering.

On the downside, is the competition presented by Windows and Linux. By some accounts, Apple is now in danger of becoming the third most popular Operating System, behind Linux and Windows. However, one could look at this approach as a way to stem some of the losses. Another downside would be that Apple hardware would no longer be tied to the OS itself so people who want the features of OSX would not have to buy Apple hardware.

By offering their operating system on Intel processor, Apple could find itself with a growing market again in the OS world, providing a solid mainstream consumer alternative to Windows. On the downside, it could be cannibalizing its own hardware sales.

Apple and Windows

All this brings me to part two of the Wintel Strategy: Windows machine from Apple. It is undeniable that the look and feel, the design, and the marketing of Apple hardware exude coolness. The hard work that the Apple design team puts in its products is a large part of the company’s continued relevance in the market and few companies (Sony and Alienware are the only ones that come to mind) in the industry have the kind of following that Apple hardware enjoys.

If Apple started offering hardware that ran with Transmeta CPUs and could run Windows software, one could see an upsurge in the sales of laptop and desktops as part of the Apple business. For the last few years, sales of macs have been sluggish at best and I believe that part of the problem is a skittishness on the part of consumers to be locked into the Apple world, forced to use only Apple hardware and software. With the software being liberated, Apple could look to a slow migration of its hardware platform to Transmeta processors (AMID or Intel could also be contenders).

Why Transmeta? Well, my thinking is that the Transmeta approach is to do software-based processor units through code morphing. If they were to offer a G5 equivalent of their morphing software. This would establish a base line in terms of offering equivalence with current hardware. The next step would be to offer the same hardware but with the Transmeta Intel-based chips, which could then run the windows or Linux platform (or any other Intel-based OS). Users who want to experience the coolness factor of owning a mac would be able to do so and still run the apps that somehow kept them from moving to OSX.

On the downside, Apple would not necessarily hold much of a lead with the operating system. As more and more Intel-like systems go out the door, Apple could loose some of the remaining market share they hold in the operating system. Another potential downside would be the commoditization of the hardware platform. However, I believe they would still be able to hold patents on their designs and continue producing products that look cool.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Some people will probably dismiss these concepts as plain nuts and I have to admit that it takes quite a leap of faith. To me, however, that leap of faith was made by Apple with the iPod and I believe that they can make it again as a way to increase their overall market share.

The overall downside of this strategy is that it might anger fans, who are notoriously devoted to the company. However, Apple has not really worried about this much in the past. In the 90s, the company started OEMing their hardware platform but decided to pull back when some vendors started representing real competition (remember PowerComputing?)

The question is whether Apple wants to remain a niche player in the computer market. Based on the last quarterly report, it seems that most of the growth is coming from the music business. So maybe this would be a good way to reinvigorate the computing part of the business.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Why Apple should consider Wintel. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Microsoft

Of course, everyone will focus on how this move puts Google and Microsoft in a competitive situation. Microsoft representatives have said they considered search an important space, potentially putting Google on the defensive. The interesting thing in the way Google approached this is that they did not react as Netscape did, launching into announcements about the future irrelevance of Microsoft; they did not take Microsoft head on in a market (Operating Systems or web browsers) that Microsoft currently dominates. What they did was leverage off a market in which they had the advantage: Search. While they did not come out and say it out loud, the message is clear: you can have search in Longhorn when it comes out or you can have it now. Try Google today and maybe you’ll want to stick around in the future.

Apple

Apple has already announced an interest in search, with the unveiling of Spotlight, a new search feature available in the next version of their operating system. Google has not released a product on the Mac platform but I would not be surprised if that were coming… after the product is available for Linux. The continuing decline of the Mac platform seems to push it further and further into irrelevance. Now, Google attacks the mac platform by taking a feature that was supposed to be a differentiator, compared to Windows, and making it available on the Windows platform. This is potentially dangerous to Apple, a company trying the monolithic approach at offering solutions: Use Apple and that’s all you need.

Modular by Design

I recently highlighted what I call the Modular by Design approach, which is predicated on 6 basic key points: standards, focus, flexibility, speed, communication, and stealth. In unveiling this new tool, Google seems to be adopting the approach as a competitive advantage. If you consider Google as the standard for search (and it seems there is a consensus agreement that, for the time being, that’s the case), they are following a pretty standard-based approach. Their focus is on search, obviously. Their flexibility comes from the ability to adapt that focus to target key markets. In terms of speed, it is hard not to see the speed of growth of the company (which did not exist 7 years ago and has rolled most of its new offerings in the last 2–3 years). From a communication standpoint, they are involved in getting feedback from their user community, often releasing products as very long beta (for example, Google News and Froogle, their shopping search engine, are still in beta even though both have been out for over a year). And moves like the announcement of Gmail and today’s new offering show a strong ability at operating stealthily.

On the relevancy of the Operating System

Almost as important in the blurring of the lines between desktops and the web, as illustrated by Google desktop, is a discussion about the long term relevancy of the operating system as an application platform. It seems that increasingly, the application platform is becoming the web, with operating systems being roughly a way to run connected software. Already today, more and more of our daily tasks are running through the Internet, whether it is communication (email, IM, VoIP), research (web surfing, information consumption from news sites and blogs), creation and distribution (weblogs and their extensions like podcasting, photoblog, etc..) or entertainment (music, movies, games…)

From there, then comes two potential areas of interest for new software developers: tools that can help the creation of new things (weblogs, photo-editing software, music editing software, other data-type creation tools like Flash), tools and protocols that can help their distribution (RSS, search tools, servers), and tools that ease their consumption (Newsreaders, picture-viewer, plug-ins, etc…) Most of those, however, seem to be increasingly able to run within the context of a web browser. So what happens when tools that bridge the gap between the browser and the desktop become more important? Google desktop does provide one of those points of integration and if you look closely, it seems that Google is placing itself at the other end, providing tools for creation (Blogger, Picasa) and organization and discovery (search). This could be a pretty large marketplace for them and could help them control a substantial part of the digital future. At the same time, the move of those tools continues to erode the relevance of the operating system as the platform as more and more services move to browser-based systems. Google firing this shot across the bow of the Microsoft ship is not only aimed at Microsoft but also at other OS vendors.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Blurring the line: Google Desktop. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Certain software companies have been suffering from the advance of modularity in software design. The main one, to date, has been Microsoft with its Windows software platform. In the mid-nineties, Microsoft decided to integrate a number of Internet components tightly with its operating systems offering. The two most critical ones of those components have been a web server (IIS) and a web browser (Internet Explorer). Leaving aside discussions relating to the antitrust issues this kind of integration has raised, the integration of those tools with the operating system have left openings for alternative approaches that were more modular.

On the server end, IIS has been the subject of many attacks by hackers. Because it is hooked deeply into the operating system, an attack against the web server can have an impact that goes much further that the web front-end. In most cases, the attacks succeeded not only in taking machines down but also turning them into zombie armies that could then turn around and attack other servers. In 2001, the Code Red virus successfully infected hundreds of thousands of machines in less than 24 hours. Subsequent viruses built on this approach and have been responsible for some of the largest attacks against Internet systems to date. The news that the system had built in back-doors only furthered the issue, presenting an opening for other software developers.

The open source movement exploited this by presenting an alternative with Linux and Apache. The Linux operating system, which is modular by design, can be fined tuned and services can be included or not depending on how one wants to shape their system. A web server like Apache can be included in the OS but doesn’t have to be. Because of this modular approach, Apache (which runs on a number of different operating systems) has gained the high ground in terms of marketshare. The Apache project focused on delivering modular components, which represent a tool-set for most web-based application.

The same is true on the desktop end. While Microsoft decided to tightly integrate its web browser with the operating system, making it easier to create lock-in for that platform, the approach backfired when hackers developed viruses and trojans that exploited flaws in the browser software to get to the operating system. It was only a matter of time before users started getting annoyed by the number of attacks and looking at alternative. They found one in the Mozilla foundation, a group of open source developers who created a modular Internet product suite. Because the Mozilla products were built in a modular fashion, the first attack was responded to in less than a week. This quick turnaround in fixing the bug was due to the way the code is implemented: because it is modular, it was much easier to fix and because it does not communicate deeply with the operating system, it represents less of a risk than Internet Explorer and has been recommended by security experts like CERT.

While the browser and web server represent applications that are bundled with an operating system, some people are looking to go much further by modularizing the operating system itself. When broken down to its smaller components, an operating system can almost become device-independent, providing interactions between different components to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its part. Future operating systems will be able to evolve across multiple devices, whether they are computers, mobile phones, televisions, or other devices we have not imagined yet.

This kind of distributed system already exists but in a limited fashion. Some organizations have used Linux to create supercomputers by connecting multiple small machines. The power given to those allows to greatly reduce the overall cost of building very large machines. Similarly, one of the largest web-based application, Google, uses tens of thousands of machines which interact with each other as a single system.

The lesson in this approach is that a modular approach always wins over an integrated one because it reduces costs and increases scalability, thus ensuring greater flexibility. While one can never predict changing markets and future developments, a modular approach is always more flexible and easier to evolve over time.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Modular by Design — Software. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

• Physical security for electronic systems
• Rigorous testing of electronic machines
• Properly trained poll workers, and rapid-response teams on Election Day
• Public records at the precinct level
• The option to vote non-electronically
• Independent security experts
• Transparency in electronic voting

Looking at this list, it seems that an e-voting system would benefit from being open-sourced.

Democracy and Open-source

My first reason for mentioning open-source as the savior of e-voting is that the open source community is inherently democratic in its nature. If you have something to contribute, you just go ahead and do it. If it’s good enough to withstand the scrutiny of other developers, it gets used. If it isn’t, it gets abandoned. This system of peer-review has already helped in turning some projects into the basic foundation of the everyday Internet: BIND basically covers how Internet addresses are translated from numbers to more friendly domain names; Apache powers the majority of the web servers in the world; Sendmail still sits at the core of most email implementation. Quietly, each of those tools gets improved by open-source communities, which can be seen as the best example of meritocracy in existence: you are what you contribute in the open source space.

Because the open-source community is a global one, tools can take into accounts variations at local levels, which is also something that benefits a more democratic process.

Democracy, Open Source, and weblogs

Weblogs have, other the last few years, added a missing component to the open source community: non-techie user feedback. When a blogger complains about a particular open-source tool, he’s providing feedback as to what works or doesn’t. In some cases, it can get contentious, as techies sometimes dismiss the user as clueless; but in other cases, it can be a good way to provide feedback.

E-voting as the most important open-source project

At the core of the open source argument is the concept of openness. At the core of the democratic argument is the concept of… openness. A strong democratic society stays open. However, power lobbies attempt to close things down for their own benefit. We’ve seen it happen around copyrights in the United States and are now seeing it happen in a number of other areas. In a strong democracy, watchdogs keep those attempts to be overly abusive. One way to ensure that they’re not is to provide some of the basic tenets of democracy. As a result, I’d venture to say that creating an e-voting package that is freely distributable is one of the most important projects the open source movement could undertake.

E-voting: A lot of work

Creating a good, secure, and open e-voting system is a lot of work. The work spreads across two key areas: hardware specifications and software development.

On the hardware end, a base implementation needs to provide a system that is inexpensive (so it can also be used in poorer countries), secure (so it cannot be tampered with), stable and reliable (so it does not add complexity to managing the electoral process), easy to use (so non-techies can put them in place and maintain them) and auditable (so its value can be proven).

On the software end, the software must be reliable and stable (so it doesn’t disturb an election), secure (to solve existing problems), auditable (so it can leave a trace of anything done to the system, either on the administrative end (setup and maintenance) or on the usage end), anonymous (so one can’t track who voted for whom), easy-to-use (so that even non-computer users can use it), scalable (so that it can be used at the local as well as national (or supra-national, in the case of Europe) level).

This is work that will need to bring experts from a number of areas in the open-source community, from people well versed on security to people well versed on design. However, because of diversity in the open-source community, the experts already exist. The question that remains is how to bring them together.

A long term project

In 2000, I called for more computerization of the voting system. Four years later, we seem to be facing similar predicaments. The private sector has stepped up to the plate but seems to have failed on a number of fronts, one of which is transparency. Considering that vacuum, it looks like it’s time for the open source community to step in. Results won’t be clear for many years to come, which makes it more difficult to manage as a long term project. However, projects like Linux did not just pop-up all built. To date, they have been the result of continuous improvement to a strong core.

The real test would be to see those machines deployed on a short term basis to do things like non-government related elections (maybe initially to vote on things like who gets to sit on the board of a foundation that would run this effort moving forward), and as time goes on, test them in school elections, then local government elections, and so on… As a result, it will be a project that will probably not alter the course of a democracy for at least another decade.

Can the open-source community work on such an effort for as long a time? I believe it can.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title E-voting and the Open Source community. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

As many people in the net community know by now, SCO has posted a reward of $250,000 for information leading to the arrest of the MyDoom author. In parallel, Microsoft has posted a reward of $250,000 to people that will help find the creator of MyDoom.B That’s a total of half a million dollars.

Earlier this year, the OSDL created a Linux Legal Defense Fund to fight SCO’s claims.

Let’s imagine for a second that the open source community use its effort to find the person responsible for the MyDoom virus and its variant. What if the community then picked up the purse from SCO and Microsoft? What if it then gave that money to OSDL as part of the fight against SCO? Wouldn’t that be the sweetest irony?

I think it’s a good idea and that’s why I’m issuing a call to the community to fight against vigilante behavior by finding the guilty party. That’s also why I’m asking whoever finds the guilty party to send the money to OSDL.

The open source community can do great things when it comes to developing software. How about using the open source approach to tracking down the guilty party and then using Microsoft and SCO’s money to help defend Linux?

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Putting the Open Source Community to Work on MyDoom. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

It may sound like heresy and would create quite some controversy in the online space but let’s face it, the browser wars are over. Since AOL decided to get out of the browser business, the Mozilla foundation has successfully managed a transition and is now moving forward on adding value to their offerings.

By adopting Mozilla as their core rendering engine, Microsoft could achieve a number of quick wins: first of all, it would allow it to adopt a number of new features that many users have requested. Things like tabbed browsing, an expandable plug-in architecture, a rendering language for the application layer (no more XUL vs XAML discussions) would come out of the box.

Second, it would put an end to issues relating to standard compliance that have plagued the different implementation. Since Internet Explorer controls the market, and Mozilla and Firebird represent a substantial portion of the remaining of the market, throwing Microsoft’s support behind Mozilla would mean an increase in market share for IE in that compatibility issues between the two browsers would become inexistent.

Such a move would also get Microsoft more involved in the open source community and could be seen as extending an olive branch to that world by saying that Microsoft employees can work side by side with open source volunteers to produce great software.

Last but not least would be the fact that Microsoft could offer versions of IE for more platforms, discontinuing its concept of abandoning the Macintosh platform and extending into Linux and other Unix system (wouldn’t that be ironic?)

While it is evident to see what advantage Microsoft gains, some people may wonder what are the advantages for the Mozilla foundation. On this end, I would see a couple of things.

First of all, a player like Microsoft backing Mozilla would solidify the financial footing of the Mozilla foundation for years to come. Another issue would be in terms of market share: While IE has a dominant market share and Mozilla still remains the second player by a large margin, such an alliance would make both browsers only one, hence turning the platform in the de-facto industry standard.

Another advantage to the Mozilla foundation would be the marketing power of Microsoft coupled with the technological advances made by the Mozilla foundation could help standard compliance flourish around the internet. At the current time, many web developers only develop for Internet Explorer because it has the leading market share.

The firebird effort would also benefit from this as I am assuming that Microsoft would still want to keep Outlook as its email client (the integration with Exchange server means that trying to get Microsoft to move to a new email client would be difficult at best)

The road would not be an easy one. First of all, Microsoft would have to find a way to either import its plug-in architecture (the ActiveX one) into Mozilla or abandon it and consider Mozilla’s approach instead. This would be a major development as many of the security issues in IE have been relating to this.

The other thing would be an audit of the Mozilla code base to plug any holes that may exist and ensure close connectivity between the Windows Operating System and the browser. At the current time, I would venture to say that Mozilla products have benefited from the lack of notice by script kiddies. Becoming the largest player in the market would make Mozilla an instant target.

While I am dreaming about this, the realist in me says that it will not happen. But then again, one can always dream.…

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title A Modest Browser Proposal. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Apple

Apple will come out with a new lower-powered, lower-cost version of the iPod. The idea here is that they want to extend their lead in the digital music space and use the iTunes music store as a leverage for selling more iPods. From there, I suspect they will introduce a new low-end iPod which will follow the existing iPod line and offer less hard drive space at a lower price. In conjunction with this announcement, they will introduce a new line of iPods that offer support for both audio and video. From there, we might see a tentative move into the digital video space, with the possibility of their extending the offering on the iTunes music store to include downloadable music videos. Later on in the year, rumors will go uncofirmed as to whether Apple plans to introduce a downloadable movies service.

Apple will also announce the release of a new class of laptops powered by the G5 chip but offering lower speeds than their desktop counterparts, due to issues relating with chip cooling.

Convergence: Music Stores

As more music store follow Apple’s lead, we will see at least one other site (probably Wal-Mart’s) offering downloadable AAC files and follow Apple’s lead. On the other side, Apple will announce that it is solidifying its relationship with AOL and offering the iTunes music store as a component of AOL.

The recognition that the online music business is a low margin one will force many players to reassess their strategy, with consolidation ensuing in that market and solidifying across two standards: Windows Media Player files and AAC files.

Convergence: Voice over IP

2004 will be a big year for Voice over IP with many companies offering Internet telephony products in both the small and medium business arena and the consumer one. As major telephone companies unroll their offering in that arena, thoughts will go to redefining what a telecommunication company is about and new consolidation and splits will see phone companies reorganizing around two business models, either as utility providers, providing the infrastructure (the hardwired lines that go into a house or office), or as service corporations, providing services that run over those lines (the voice telephone will begin to be thought of as a service instead of a utility).

By year end, there will be a lot of discussion as to what those companies are about and calls to reshape the regulatory dialogue on what a telecommunication infrastructure is about. The other discussion on regulation will go towards figuring out how to deal with pricing models on communication services as the new services will destroy the concept of local and long distance.

Wireless: WiFi phones and integration everywhere

A big surprise will be the rise of mobile phones that use Wireless Internet connectivity (Wi-Fi) and voice over IP to allow users to place calls using the Internet infrastructure.

Data services will become more prominent in mobile phones, led by camera-phones, which will increasingly be used for multimedia messaging, and the introduction of some videophone services. As mobile phone companies see more pressure on their voice services, due to the introduction of WiFi phones and continued pressure relating to number portability, they will look to data services as a new source of income.

Business: Revenge of the Internet companies

Internet business will be in the headlines again as Internet companies show they have built successful business models based on profit instead of promise. As a result, investor confidence in Internet stock will return with an increase on stocks of companies that show they can use technology to lower costs and increase productivity.

In parallel, venture capitalists will start investing in new technology companies. Much of the money that has stayed dormant for the last few years will be invested in new companies that focus on services in the infrastructure, security, and interconnectivity arenas.

Of course, the big initial public offering of the year will be Google, which will generate enough excitement in the investment community to have a coattail effect on other Internet stocks.

On the downside of the investment picture, the stocks of Amazon, Ebay, and Yahoo will loose value as investors realize that their price/earning ratio are out of proportion compared to the rest of the market. Amazon will try stemming the losses in their share price by announcing that they are moving to a new strategy: offering a complete set of hosted services for retailers who want to lower their cost, instead of just being an online retailer on its own.

Business: Sun in trouble

Sun microsystems will see itself in a difficult situation as it finds itself squeezed on the lower end by Linux, which will continue to eat Solaris’ marketshares, and on the higher end by Linux, which will increasingly be seen as the way to go when it comes to large scale applications. Companies like IBM and HP will offer utility computing as a “better approach” for large scale applications, running them on mainframes instead of large numbers of blades.

On the educational end, Sun will lose marketshares to Apple, which will be pushing its G5 and OSX platform as a better alternative.

In a dramatic announcement to save the company, Scott McNealy will announce that Sun will abandon Solaris and move completely to Linux by the end of 2005. The company will also look to sell its SPARC processor business, with either HP or IBM picking it up, and announce that it is moving to a new hardware architecture, based on chips produced by another company.

Development: Standards at the forefront

Many large scale businesses will realize the value of building Internet applications on open standards like XML, XHTML, and CSS. As a result, the redesign of many major corporate sites will support those standards and an increasing amount of time will be devoted to making websites more accessible.

RSS will also experience a major growth curve as more and more people become aware of the power offered by such a subscription model. Much discussion will be paid to defining business models for delivery of RSS with media organizations trying to figure out how to distribute advertising in their RSS feeds. Initially, the Internet community will denounce the introduction of ads in RSS feeds but will come to admit it as a necessary evil later on in the year.

Society: Social Networks at the core

While services like Friendster, Tribe, Ryze, and pluggedin received a lot of coverage in the tech sector last year, many investments in the sector will fail as companies just look at social networking as yet another feature to add to their site. The existing players will either merge or be sold to companies like AOL, Yahoo, or Microsoft, which will add social networking as another component in their online product offerings.

Apple will be the surprise player in this new arena, using OSX as the basis for a new social networking platform that will merge their address book application with mail, calendaring and chat services to provide an end to end solution on user’s desktops and offer added services through their .mac platform.

Politics: Internet comes of age

Much of the US presidential campaign will be using the Internet as a political tool to organize supporters and raise funds. The early lead taken by Vermont Senator and democractic presidential candidate Howard Dean will help him win his party’s nomination. Using the same tools during the general election, Dean will try to ignite the general democratic base in a fight against George Bush. The Republican party will enter the election season with a similar set of tools and much of the campaign will be fought online with some potential scandal arising out of one of the candidate’s site being hacked. As a result of the Internet battle, record numbers of voters will show up at the polls in November.

Of course, TNL.net will continue reporting on all this and show how wrong all those predictions were at the end of year.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title 2004 Predictions. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Going further, SCO is now trying to overturn the GPL, the licensing scheme used by most of the open source community to share and redistribute code. As a result, they have essentially gone to war against the whole open source community.

One of the interesting suggestions that came up is the fact that, by saying that Open Source is theft, and that by saying Linux is theft, SCO is essentially defaming any person that uses or promotes Linux and/or open source product.

Based on this insight, it is possible to look forward to a time when geeks might consider striking back. Estimates on the installed base of open source/Linux users ranges from a few millions to much higher numbers. What if a lot of those users were to file defamation lawsuits in their state. This is the concept of death by a thousand paper cuts: with thousands of cases built around defamation of character (“SCO said that I was a thief!”), SCO could find itself battling on many fronts (let’s assume for a second that only 10 people in each state do file such a lawsuit: That’s 500 lawsuits!)

As the discussion shifted around that concept, suspicion was that SCO would then ask to consolidate those lawsuit in a single one at the federal level. At this point, it could be seen essentially as a class action lawsuit. If a single set of firms were to represent that class, we could be looking at a class of several million people. If all those people chipped in 10 dollars each to help defray the cost of the class action, the money raised to fight SCO could run in the millions of dollars.

This could represent a new challenge for SCO, as they would now have to fight a heavily financed machine. I don’t know that much about the law but it seems there is the germ of an interesting idea here, one that could redefine the SCO fight.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title SCO vs. the world. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

My personal suspicion is that the net community will route around the problem once enough people become aware of what is going on.

The rise of Linux as an alternative to deeply entrenched Windows is showing that something new is happening here. While SCO has started menacing litigation over intellectual property and Linux, the message from big companies is that they are not changing their strategy. What is important here is not the fact that companies are adopting Linux but the fact that companies are starting to look at the OS as a commodity, one that can easily be replaced at a later time. This is an important development because it lowers the potential for control. In order to fully control what consumers have access to, you need to be able to control the environment. With operating systems becoming a commodity, that control erodes.

Control of the operating system is one of the key elements behind the TCPA’s goal to lock up computers in order to give more control to content producers. However, with a commodity operating system that control becomes more difficult to gain. The next two areas in which such control can happen are at the processor level (and here, I would invoke market dynamics as a surefire way to fight this point since at least one vendor will probably want to differentiate itself from its competitors by offering non-crippled chips) and at the access level.

That last point, however, is countered by the fact that increasingly (and this is something the phone and cable companies do not want you to know), the cost of running your own access point is dropping. True, it still costs several hundreds or thousands of dollars a month to do so but I suspect that something much scarier could happen if the pipes start clamping down.

With the rise of Wi-Fi, control of the net is moving from cables to the open airspace. Granted, many will say that in order to access resources on the Internet, there is still a need for access to a land line software, even if that land line is connected to a wireless router. However, with the rise of cheap access point devices, there is a possibility for creating a new network, one that does not touch upon the rest of the net, but one that does connect computers from access point to access point. In a way, all the technology needed for this already exists. A network protocol like TCP/IP can carry content over the air, and technologies like Zero Configuration Networking make discoverability easy to do. Coupled with the explosive growth of wireless hotspots, the hold on connection lines is increasingly becoming irrelevant. What is happening here is not only a commoditization of the operating system but also a commoditization of the connectivity space.

Even in a world where the United States manages to outlaw Linux and where the big telcos manage to regulate Internet access, unfetered access to ressource beyond their control will continue. If one studies geopolitics, it is easy to see that some countries will see it in their best interest to avoid such regulation so they can offer data havens, picking up nice extra tax dollars on the sale of goods and services in those havens. Ultimately, the problem US companies have, whether they manage to regulate the Internet or not, is that the network is now largely a global one.

To date, attempts to limit Internet activities in certain parts of the world (Iraq and China for example) have only met with resistance and ultimately failure in terms of limiting what people can and cannot see. I suspect that if such limits were imposed by large corporation, they would meet the same fate as those efforts, maybe stopping activity for a little while but, eventually, someone would find a hole. And it is from such small hole that the dam would burst.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Route Around. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Often, geeks like myself tend to jump on technology for technology’s sake. An example of this is the recent hubbub over (n)echo, which has left many people wondering whether RSS is broken. The truth is that it isn’t and that whatever new format comes up will live nicely in parallel to RSS for years to come.

When estimating technology, one should ask himself/herself whether it is the right tool for the job. I could write a calculator program to calculate the sum of one and one but that does not mean that I should (especially on such a small thing). So why is it that we get so blinded by technology? Why is it that the old axiom “to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail” holds true so often when it comes to technology projects?

Part of it is what I would call institutional blindness. It is the kind of thing that sits at the source of most of the big conflicts in the technology space: platform wars like Windows vs. Mac, Windows vs. Linux, Internet Explorer vs. Netscape, RSS vs. (n)echo are often rooted into a set view of how the world is, not how it could be. Some of the most vocal people in those discussions are set on a particular approach and refuse to see the value in the other way.

For example, I’ve recently made the switch from Microsoft windows to Linux as the underlying operating system for TNL.net. There was no acrimony on my part regarding Microsoft. I think Microsoft is a good company when it comes to building desktop operating systems that people use. While many assign sinister motives to Microsoft moves, I do not believe that the company is inherently evil. What I do believe is that the company has a certain view of computing and that this view no longer aligns with my own. Companies, in and of themselves, do not have any motives. They are merely legal entities created to market products and services.

The same can be said of projects. Many people are saying that Dave Winer is inflexible in his stewardship of RSS. However, what they fail to realize is that, while Dave did come up with the initial RSS 2.0 specification, he specifically said that

while these copyright restrictions apply to the written RSS specification, no claim of ownership is made by UserLand to the format it describes

By doing so, he essentially gave anyone a right to extend RSS. So why come up with another format? And why fight over it?

It seems to me that the discussions over the restoration of David are no more academic than the recent discussions over RSS and (n)echo. In both cases, we have people who have done some great work. In both cases, we have disagreement as to how to move forward. In both cases, we will end up with something that will leave some people unhappy.

However, in the case of online syndication, unlike in restoration, there is a way to have your cake and eat it too. Based on my cursory experience of (n)echo to date, I am not yet seeing much value. I do know, however, that RSS is driving large amounts of traffic to my site, and thus, helps me have interesting discussions with a lot of people. RSS 2.0 is highly extensible, if that’s what you want. Some people say it is stuck but I can’t help but think that it is they who are stuck. Stuck on personal conflicts that, in the end, accomplish little in terms of moving standards forward but end up irritating everyone (while Dave and I do not always agree on implementation, and while I have often been on the receiving end of some of his flames, I do value his technical input and his past accomplishments. At the same time, I am willing to go with what I feel is right, whether he or anyone else agrees (as can be attested from my own offering of RSS 1.0 feeds on the TNL.net site))

The question to all participants in the current RSS/(n)echo flame wars (as this entry is largely targeted at them) is where is the value? and will your format stand in the long run. I suspect RSS will be in use for years to come. I also suspect that, for the most part, it will change. I do believe that all those involved in this fight need to take some time off and figure out what is best for the format. Sure, people can make fun and attack each other but how does that help anyone? At the end of the day, I wish that we all had a Ruby filter in all our discussions.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title From David to Dave. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

One thing all those devices have in common, however, is that they are all connected in one way or another to a network, and can access the Internet. As the network becomes more and more central to our daily lives, why is it that no one has come up with a solution that allows for synchronization on a central device (probably a server sitting on the Internet)?

In the case I am highlighting, the central server would be a repository of basic information: contact info. However, the challenge comes from the fact that it would be able to synchronize in real-time without involving any actual extra work on my part.

The system I am describing would have some key features. First of all, it would have to be easy to use and access. A simple screen would allow me to enter basic data on a single person: name, email address and phone number. Once entered, the system would fire off an email to the person so they can add the rest of the data themselves. This would ensure that the information is up to date at the time of entry. Every so often, the system would double check with the person to ensure that their data is up to date.

Devices like my phone, PDA, or computer would then use some pull technology to get their information up to date on a regular basis (every hour? every day? every week?) and update themselves automatically.

All the components seem to be here to devise such a system. For starters, building a central repository is largely an issue of proper database management. Of course, there is a need for a proper security wrapper to ensure confidentiality but it seems to me that this is also available.

The auto-update feature would mirror technology already built into the major operating systems (be it Windows Update, RedHat Linux Up2Date, or OSX. The last part that needs to be agreed upon is a consistent way to push this information across all devices, allowing for similar functionality on phones and PDAs too.

Granted, this centralization of contact may not please everyone. As a result, the software should allow users to point to a different central server (hence removing the possibility for one company controlling all this information). Systems like Microsoft passport have failed in the past because they assumed that control should remain in the hands of a single company. A way to get around this would be to use a web service approach that would sync data across multiple servers (a server administrator would be able to set levels of access to the federation and a user would also be able to customize whether they want that information to be made public.)

The end game here is a system that would allow for synchronization of data with minimal involvement from the end user (meaning the devices would be smart enough to distribute the information amongst themselves once they have been registered as trusted entities by the user). We’re starting to see some of that with products like Apple iSync but those still rely on a desktop metaphor, control of the system by a single vendor (in this case, Apple), and some level of user involvement in order to sync data up (even though connectivity between devices can easily be established with things like BlueTooth).

I’m dubbing this concept SuperSync.

Does anyone out there know of a system like the one I am describing? If so, please feel free to contact me.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title SuperSync. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

We need to ensure redundancy across the network as a whole.

At the time, my comments were centering around the evolution of a single format. As the net moves forward, the same words can be applied to the wider spectrum of protocols on the net. I dare hope that people will see this as a battle cry to enhance our key infrastructure. Otherwise, the next time something like the Slammer worm comes around, we may end up loosing more that 15% of net traffic; we may end up loosing access to a complete information infrastructure that could include mobile phones, land lines, Internet access, and more.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title The Net as Critical Infrastructure. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

With the new agreement, AOL has received a royalty-free license to use Internet Explorer for the next seven years. Since the browser has been sitting at the core of their online service client, it is doubtful that this will change in the future. As a result, AOL is now supporting an open source project which adds little value to its bottom line. The Netscape browser holds very little strategic value for the company moving forward. Considering its enormous debt, AOL Time-Warner might eventually reconsider its investment in the Mozilla project.

In its initial iteration, a large part of the development for Mozilla was done by Netscape developers. In fact, the Mozilla browser is distributed under the Netscape Public License, which still ensures that the company has some level of control over what goes on there. While it is an open source, it is one with a clear sponsor.

And that sponsor may now rethink its participation. So who will pick up the slack once they do?

My best bet on this is that IBM will step in if this happens. While it may seem like an odd choice, it seems to be the only logical one when studying the matter more closely. First of all, the company has been making sizable investments in Linux has already paid some hefty dividend for the company and has allowed it to gain entry into new markets. As a result, IBM is placing itself as a clear competitor to Microsoft on the mid-range to high-range server end, using open source projects as its own horse in that race.

But why should it matter to IBM, one might wonder? Well, for starters, the server market is the entry point to larger scale application offerings in the future. With the era of web services now upon us, IBM wants to make sure that it will still remain relevant moving forward. The web services world is one in which both IBM and Microsoft are currently happy to play together, jointly defining specifications for the space, there is a clear understanding that they are in competition for this future space. History has obviously shown that Microsoft and IBM can partner up and have eventual fallouts. It is a lesson that probably was not lost on IBM and that now permeates a lot of what they do.

So back to Mozilla. While it is mostly seen as a browser, Mozilla is much more than that. For starters, it offers a complete suite of Internet products, ranging from the well known browser to a bug tracking system, an email client and much much more. At its core, Mozilla is a development platform on which other applications can run. This is significant in that it provides a cross-platform development environment which offers a nice alternative to the Microsoft windows platform. So, while Microsoft is trying to use the net as a way to bring everything back into windows, Mozilla can be used to bring net components into a variety of operating systems (hence benefiting Linux, because you are not locked into a particular operating system).

As more and more application require access to the Internet, the browser window becomes the de-facto UI for the computing world. It’s something that Microsoft understands, and this is why they are more tightly integrating the browser into the OS and why tools like Mozilla are important.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Mozilla after AOL. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.