I write again from Lake Tahoe (it's snowing). This time motivated by the panel on massive server farms and the discussion of distributed computing. Folks have been talking about and predicting distributed computing for years, about the applications and processing power moving off the desktop and on to the Net. And more and more of the associated architectural problems--storage, memory, if not yet switching, parallel programming, and network capacity--are being addressed.

A couple of the speakers mentioned doubt about the extent of demand. I think they somewhat understated consumer resistance both at the individual user and institutional level. Everyone has had some experience with loading or running an application that does something undesired or unexpected to one's files, default settings, or other applications. Turning over something of little value--the handful of words that consitute a Google search, most email--to the mercy of another entity's infrastructure and application settings is one thing. Turning over a spreadsheet or a unique photo, difficult to replace at any price, is another. Of course there are backups of such things but one doesn't want to be in the position of actually having to use them. So to my mind complete movement to distributed computing is unlikely, even at a very low price point.

To the extent that distributed computing does catch on, it will have interesting implications for open source. More Googles may spring up--application service providers using the contributions of the open source community to help along the economics of providing software for free, selling services, but not releasing the program. And so whether or not the open source community moves en masse to close this "ASP loophole," will be interesting. To the extent that they do, they will make themselves less attractive to any adopter not anxious to release their code after making changes tailored to their own business needs (especially changes to enhance security or otherwise secure competitive advantage). To the extent that they do not, they will find themselves being free rode on relentlessly, with the value they provide being captured elsewhere. Perhaps they will see this as a triumph which enhances a self-conception as servants of the community. That does seem like a consistent response, but so far has been overshadowed by the fear of being exploited. Something that Richard Stallman has in common with the movie studios, perhaps? But so much stranger, because the movie studies aren't trying to give away something for free.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:32 PM | Infrastructure, Internet: P2P, Search Engines..., Software

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