Next Frontier in Proprietary Services vs. Open Protocols
It is scary to think what would’ve happened if HTTP or SMTP were owned by a single company. Yet that is exactly what’s happening with access to social graphs e.g., Twitter ending partnership with DataSift or limiting graph access for Meerkat. In Chris Dixon’s words:
Chris thinks that eventually the pendulum will swing back, but Ev Williams extrapolates from the history of radio and cable TV that industries go from open to closed corporate-monopolies. It’s unclear if the natural state of the these markets is open or closed. We can, however, look at more examples:
Operating Systems: UNIX came out under a proprietary license and for decades people sold UNIX-like proprietary operating systems. Over time, the Linux open-source kernel emerged as the gold standard with the only real exception being OS X. This is also a win for the open POSIX standard which OS X complies to.
Webservers: In the 90s, proprietary webservers, marketed as faster, more reliable etc., had significant marketshare. However, the current landscape looks like open-source servers like Apache, Nginx are clearly winning. Webservers need to comply with standards and it’s easier to comply to standards if you’re open.
Networking & Cloud Computing: Recently, OpenFlow (networking protocol) and OpenStack (cloud computing stack) are examples of open-source protocols/standards that are growing faster than proprietary ones.
The common theme here is that developer-facing technologies have a harder time winning if they are proprietary. The best hackers and developers don’t like working on proprietary technologies. This is, however, currently not true for designers. A key reason why proprietary consumer-facing services are winning against open is because the best designers are not working on open alternatives.
Open services need to offer as good or better UX/UI experience than proprietary counterparts. That’s exactly the reason why our first hire is a brilliant designer, Guy Lepage, who is helping us build an open alternative to online identity and social graphs. In the battle of proprietary vs. open protocols, the next frontier is design and designers will play a critical role in swinging the pendulum back.
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