07.29.07
Taking aim at the walled gardens?
In the beginning, there was email. It was open, it was interoperable, and all was well.
Then came the web, and, for a while, it, too was open and interoperable, and all was well.
Then came “online services,” walled gardens that kept their users from the web and interoperable email. They were closed, proprietary ecosystems; interoperability was a late, shoehorned addition. All was not well for users locked inside these gardens.
Then came the days of the lawless, “Wild West Web,” where interoperability was bleeding on the main street outside the saloon after the duel with browser vendors determined to make the web something that only worked in their browser. Users, citizens of this internet junction, were suffering.
Then a new sheriff rode into town, on a fire-breathing red lizard. It was Mozilla, determined to make the internet, all of it (as witnessed by its flagship product, an all-in-one suite of internet applications), open and interoperable again. Lawlessness was at an all-time high, but slowly the sheriff gathered a set of deputies, chief among them Chimera and Phoenix, and later Thunderbird, to help reign in lawlessness and make the internet open and interoperable again and to promote the public benefit. Citizens rejoiced.
Now we are seeing a rise of new walled gardens, the last refuges of those who would partition the internet into tiny fiefdoms where they might lord over their users like serfs. These walled gardens are not open or interoperable; one cannot be in one walled garden and talk to someone in another. They merely leverage the hard-won openness of the web to erect their redoubts and then lock their massive gates. Citizens are beginning to feel the burden of rushing from one walled garden to another in order to communicate with each other.
Who will lead the fight against these new walled gardens, to ensure we do not face another dark era of lawlessness on the internet where communication becomes an impossible or arduous task? The outcome of the Great Thunderbird War will tell.
We must hope the noble and just will win, or we face a dark, uncertain future of walled gardens looming over the open web, and open communication will be only a faint, fond memory.