Section 16.4. Building the Internet Operating System

16.4. Building the Internet Operating System

I like to say that we're entering the stage where we will treat the Internet as if it were a single virtual computer. To do that, we need to create an Internet operating system.

The large question before us is this: what kind of operating system is it going to be? The lesson of Microsoft is that if you leverage insight into a new paradigm, you will find the secret that will give you control over the industry, the "one ring to rule them all," so to speak. Contender after contender has set out to dethrone Microsoft and take that ring, only to fail. But the lesson of open source and the Internet is that we can build an operating system that is designed from the ground up as "small pieces loosely joined," with an architecture that makes it easy for anyone to participate in building the value of the system.

The values of the free and open source community are an important part of its paradigm. Just as the Copernican revolution was part of a broader social revolution that turned society away from hierarchy and received knowledge, and instead sparked a spirit of inquiry and knowledge sharing, open source is part of a communications revolution designed to maximize the free sharing of ideas expressed in code.

But free software advocates go too far when they eschew any limits on sharing, and define the movement by adherence to a restrictive set of software licensing practices. The open source movement has made a concerted effort to be more inclusive. Eric Raymond describes The Open Source Definition (http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php) as a "provocation to thought," a "social contract...and an invitation to join the network of those who adhere to it."^[9] But even though the open source movement is much more business friendly and supports the right of developers to choose nonfree licenses, it still uses the presence of software licenses that enforce sharing as its litmus test.

^[9] From a private email response from Eric Raymond to an earlier draft of this paper.

The lessons of previous paradigm shifts show us a subtler and more powerful story than one that merely pits a gift culture against a monetary culture, and a community of sharers versus those who choose not to participate. Instead, we see a dynamic migration of value, in which things that were once kept for private advantage are now shared freely, and things that were once thought incidental become the locus of enormous value. It's easy for free and open source advocates to see this dynamic as a fall from grace, a hoarding of value that should be shared with all. But a historical view tells us that the commoditization of older technologies and the crystallization of value in new technologies is part of a process that advances the industry and creates more value for all. What is essential is to find a balance, in which we as an industry create more value than we capture as individual participants, enriching the commons that allows for further development by others.

I cannot say where things are going to end. But as Alan Kay once said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."^[10] Where we go next is up to all of us.

^[10] Alan Kay, spoken at a 1971 internal Xerox planning meeting, as quoted at http://www.lisarein.com/alankay/tour.html (http://www.lisarein.com/alankay/tour.html).