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title: The Open Web - What's at Stake

The Open Web - What's at Stake

Brendan Eich, Mozilla @ SXSW 2007

(Adapted S9 Version from Original S5 Slide Deck)

What Does "Open" Mean?

  • Unencumbered, Cross-Platform Standards
  • Open Source / Free Software Implementations
  • No Single-Vendor "Lock-In"
  • User Innovation Network Effects
  • Distributed Extensibility

What Is Not "Open"

  • Cubic Equation Wars (16th Century Italy)
  • Apple iTunes
  • Adobe Flash, Adobe Integrated Runtime/AIR (formerly Apollo)
  • Microsoft Silverlight (formerly WPF/E - Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere)

"Open" Examples

  • The "New English Dictionary" (1857-1884)
  • Extreme Sports Gear (Windsurfing, 1978-1998)
  • Ajax Libraries (Prototype, Dojo, jQuery, etc.)
  • Most of the Public Web, Still (2007)
  • The WHAT Working Group

User Innovation Networks

  • Eric von Hippel, MIT
  • User-only innovation networks can flourish when:
    1. "Lead Users" have incentive to innovate
    2. Users voluntarily reveal their innovations
    3. Diffusion of innovations is low cost

Hard Questions

  • Will the W3C HTML WG use WHATWG specs?
  • Will Microsoft handicap the Web vs. Silverlight?
  • Will Adobe open up Flash?
  • What's Apple up to?
  • Can Mozilla make a difference (again)?

Mozilla's Position

  • We want to move the Web forward quickly
    • Offline Web Apps (Firefox 3)
    • 2D and 3D (OpenGL/ES) Canvas tag
    • JavaScript 2 / ECMAScript Edition 4
    • Better text via CSS3 and beyond
  • Working with Opera via WHATWG on <video>
    • Unencumbered Ogg Theora decoder in all browsers
    • Ogg Vorbis for <audio>
    • Other formats possible
    • DHTML player controls
  • For all browsers, not just Firefox

The Open Web and Its Adversaries

Follow-up Article: The Open Web and Its Adversaries (March 2007)