Comments on: Achieving Vendor Lock-In Through Open Source http://www.openparenthesis.org/2007/05/03/vendor-lockin-os Because these are the early days of a long revolution . . . Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:10:36 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: John http://www.openparenthesis.org/2007/05/03/vendor-lockin-os#comment-92121 John Mon, 07 May 2007 14:41:28 +0000 http://www.openparenthesis.org/2007/05/03/vendor-lockin-os/#comment-92121 Thanks Lukas - you're absolutely right about the challenge of "black box" web applications. I often talk about this as "integration with Web 1.0" though that's not entirely fair, since it's really just "integration with web standards" or "working with web expectations" or something like that. Having content that lives in a structured way in the DOM and is accessible programatically is part of what has made Web 2.0 possible. There is the <a href="http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex_Framework:FABridge" rel="nofollow">Flash/Ajax bridge</a> to mitigate some of those problems, but most web apps leveraging Flash don't take the time to make it accessible in that way. Thanks Lukas – you’re absolutely right about the challenge of “black box” web applications.

I often talk about this as “integration with Web 1.0″ though that’s not entirely fair, since it’s really just “integration with web standards” or “working with web expectations” or something like that.

Having content that lives in a structured way in the DOM and is accessible programatically is part of what has made Web 2.0 possible. There is the Flash/Ajax bridge to mitigate some of those problems, but most web apps leveraging Flash don’t take the time to make it accessible in that way.

]]> By: Lukas http://www.openparenthesis.org/2007/05/03/vendor-lockin-os#comment-91978 Lukas Mon, 07 May 2007 00:07:26 +0000 http://www.openparenthesis.org/2007/05/03/vendor-lockin-os/#comment-91978 Well in the case of Silverlight there is no open source yet to be seen. In the case of Adobe the business model seems to not so clear yet either. But the approach would be: approach #1: open source the development tools, but keep the player under wraps (adobe flex) approach #2: open source the player, but keep the development tools under wraps (microsoft sliverlight?) Looking at how things are playing out with Flash one can see that both players and authoring is now possible in open source, though a lot less shiny and complete. I did not look at silverlight in detail yet, but anything that turns web applications into black boxes you cannot look into and thereby enable to do so many things the author did not intend for himself (deep linking or even niftier stuff like Greasemonkey) tries to work against what made the Internet so successful. I wouldnt hold my breath about stuff like that. The only reason for Flash to exist these days is to stream video. Well in the case of Silverlight there is no open source yet to be seen. In the case of Adobe the business model seems to not so clear yet either. But the approach would be:

approach #1:
open source the development tools, but keep the player under wraps (adobe flex)

approach #2:
open source the player, but keep the development tools under wraps (microsoft sliverlight?)

Looking at how things are playing out with Flash one can see that both players and authoring is now possible in open source, though a lot less shiny and complete.

I did not look at silverlight in detail yet, but anything that turns web applications into black boxes you cannot look into and thereby enable to do so many things the author did not intend for himself (deep linking or even niftier stuff like Greasemonkey) tries to work against what made the Internet so successful. I wouldnt hold my breath about stuff like that. The only reason for Flash to exist these days is to stream video.

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