Data Should Be the Intel Outside
Great riff by Paul Kedrosky (thanks to Steve Mallet for the link) on my "data is the Intel Inside of the next generation of computer applications" argument:
"So here is the problem: The more people that figure out that it's not about proprietary applications, but about proprietary data, then we merely move from one walled garden to another....Where should we be going? Call it "data as the Intel outside", where the innovation engine is how easily data can be recombined outside any one application. Turning things inside-out should be the Web 2.0 goal (or Web 3.0, as Steve Mallett puts it on his DataLibre site). We have open-source software messing up markets for shrink-wrap vendors of proprietary software, why shouldn't open-source data vendors mess up the market for would-be Web 2.0 vendors who are trying to Balkanize things by locking up data inside their own apps?"I totally agree with Paul, and I've been saying for years that one day we'll wake up and find a "free data foundation" analogous to the "free software foundation" reminding us that data lock in has become a problem.
Paul continues the riff in his Drive by Data blog entry. Also a wonderful piece:
What was different about Flickr, Amazon's book reviews, and so on, is that the community benefit came as a consequence of the site being useful for other reasons.... For most people their contributions will come because they are in the middle of living their life, in media res, as it were -- and living throws off information. Call it drive-by data.
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I would be interested in learning how such a business model would operate. If both the software and the data are fully open, then what is left to charge for that someone else couldn't take and distribute freely?
Unlike Steve Mallett, I'm not saying that all data (or all software) should be free. I just think that there is a golden mean, which is rarely achieved. Just as software providers went too far in the direction of lock in for their own advantage, and to the detriment of users, so too will data providers.
Ethics is ultimately the study of the consequences of our actions. Unfortunately, many people don't think enough about long term consequences, which is why open and closed systems tend to be cyclical.
"I would be interested in learning how such a business model would operate. If both the software and the data are fully open, then what is left to charge for that someone else couldn't take and distribute freely?"
Service. Just like businesses in the offline world.
Imagine eating in a restaurant and when you're finished the cook comes out and sits on you insisting you can't leave, but have to eat there from now on. Ok, you could leave, but it would be hard to do it intact.
Paul's riff is exciting.
I do agree that there needs to be some positive declaration by data custodians that makes clear how they are preserving our ownership of our data.
That's different than a Creative Commons license of our data/documents for use by others, although it is also an enabler of such use being possible.
I am thinking about our ownership of our data and (these days of spy-ware and presumptious mobile code from web sites) our computers.
This post and Paul's (who is having a problem about ownership of his site and content right now) reminds me of a talk by Eliot Kimber at a San Jose xDev event in July, 1999. The "who owns our data" question has stuck with me to this day, and my radar is quick to detect the anti-pattern in the behavior of software and intermediaries. (I love it that PeanutButter wiki will give you a Zipped download of your own wiki. Bravo.)
I remembered the question, but not Eliot. Fortunately I took notes that I was able to find (on paper) after recoving the date of the event from a desktop search of my old e-mail. I'm checking to see if his presentation is available anywhere, or I may simply post my notes of the key bullets.
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