Shuttleworth: "browser is only a temporary king"

[greggh]

I just finished listening to a new Open Voices podcast with Shuttleworth.

Audio: http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/ope ... ttleworth/

Transcript: http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/ope ... ttleworth/

I thought the most interesting thing he said was the following

And if you believe as I do that the web is not the end of the network story, then I think the free software pool is still the right place to be if you want to be part of innovation for the next wave of software.

I do think that the browser is only a temporary king, effectively, in terms of your gateway to the network. And so, once it moves back to traditional applications, if free software is the place where people can innovate fastest, then free software is the place where you’ll see the most interesting ideas.

I don't know if I see that happening any time soon. The trend has been very clear on the browser more and more essentially becoming the OS for networked applications.

[davijordan]

There are a lot of internet sites now offering personal desktops via web access. eyeos is one of them that will let you put it on your own server, http://eyeos.org/

[Tsuroerusu]

While I don't believe that "an online OS" will be the future, nor that Google's online word processor and spreadsheet will take-over from Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org, I do disagree with Shuttleworth's suggestion that the browser is not going to be where the fancy stuff is gonna happen in the future. I think new things will pop up to complement the browser, for example in areas where it's easier to have some web content displayed in a small applet, or another type of small window, rather than to have to fire up a full fledged web browser. In my opinion, that's not replacing the browser at all, it's simple making some of it's functionality easier to use, because unless people make these compliments specific to be "small", then you could still use a full fledged browser if you wanted to.

[allix]

Wasn't Red Hat or fedora going in the direction of a web desktop?

[Tsuroerusu]

Wasn't Red Hat or fedora going in the direction of a web desktop?

Not in the sense that you describe. Fedora has something called BigBoard, which integrates GNOME with some online services such as something Red Hat has called Mugshot, and some other things. I have not read too much into it, as I have very little interest in it, but you can read more about it (Screenshots included) here: http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/11/1 ... e-desktop/

[davijordan]

Not so many years ago that Larry Ellis? the head of Oracle said (paraphrased) the industry would push to have low end clients connected to mainframe like systems as the norm and that traditional standalone computers would cease to exist. I can see that as an advantage in the business or educational environment to be cost effective. Personally I like the independence to having some control of how I deal with data to create information. That is with or without a web desktop. Either way big business does not have the right to control or even decide how i do that.

save the code and re-purpose the machine.

[metrolinux]

I tend to agree with Shuttleworth on this one. The biggest problem during the time of mainframes was the single point of failure. If you loose your server, you lose your client stations. This is also true with the thinclients of today. Whoever controls the server is able to affect all the users. They also have the potential to compromise the data of everyone.

As for the web taking over the desktop, there have been several attempts to do this. The Audrey, tons of email devices, and the original iPaq line come to mind. Those products all flopped. Sure, it's convenient. But do you really want to give up all control for ease of use?

I'm not just talking about putting your data in someone else's hands. You also give up the ability to keep features that you find useful. For example, if Google only allowed web access to their Gmail, they could very easily disable the features on the fly for whatever reason they saw fit. You would have to organize your email with the bottomless abyss that they call tagging. You would be at the mercy of their address book fields. In effect, you would lose the freedom to organize things the way you think and be left with searching for a service that thinks exactly the way you do.

This is why all my email goes to a server in my house where it is carefully organized into folders sorted by date, not an arbitrary category that my email provider/software vendor set up.

All this Software As A Service stuff is completely unrealistic and merely hype for a cheaper way for vendors to deliver their products.

[davijordan]

Redundancy is very important in computing. Every good system will use it effectively so there is no down time. That is what mirroring and or clustering is all about. I wish the IT department had understood that where I used to work. We did a lot of student testing, and the server that held the student applicant scores was not mirrored both in server and disk. Systems were mirrored (something I pushed hard for) before the newer IT management took over, IT management lost a lot of data one time when that server went down. They tried to cover the loss up with a lot of bs. I can not repeat what the Testing department thought of what was going on.
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We are testing packages like eyeos, opengoo and other packages, so we do not have to be dependent on google and the like. I suggest everyone consider something like that. It is also easy to set up your own post office on your machine. With dynamic dns and a laptop, your post office is always where you are if the ports are open to the net.
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I will admit I do use google quite a bit for hardware/software info research, other research, and language translation. I look forward to the day, when I do not have to use big brother for any of that unless they are not commercially drive.