LIS5362 - Week 1 Slides - Intro to the Web

Digging deep into the web

You find two things:
Free and Open Source software (esp Linux)
AND
Text

(in a way, these are the same thing)

The Prof's Million Foot View

1) More open generally wins in the long run
2) Piracy? Meh

The First PCs

Pioneers of Freedom?

Apple II/Macintosh series

Apple v. IBM (COMPATIBLE)

MS Windows v. OS/2

The Dominance of MS

Probably not Windows the OS, but ...

The Dominance of MS

Probably not Windows the OS, but ...

How (not) to kill a giant


Direct competition?

They just buy you out.


Government Intervention?


The original "Surface" (2003-2007)

The Microsoft Tablet (2002)


Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

(I didn't make this up, they used it INTERNALLY)
Either BUY OUT your competition, or E,E,E.
(e.g.)
.Net
ActiveX
DirectX vs. OpenGL
Attempted with odt.
This prevents you from having to competitively innovate. (and is kind of understandable.)

Not even the (U.S.) gov't.

United States v. Microsoft, 253 F.3d 34 (2001)(mostly over IE.)

Europe did, but without much consequence...except that you can legally now say "Convicted Monopolist, Microsoft"

Wow, so how DO you kill a giant?

SLOWLY.

With The Internet
+
With Non Computer Devices

(both of which run on...guess what)

Missed it...

"Sometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority." - Bill Gates

Microsoft:

Home Computer as Household Appliance(running proprietary/closed source software)...

but what about those other big computers and networks and stuff...old school?

Unix

Unix

The Unix Way

Unix Descendants(aka, why am I talking about all this?)

e.g. Ubuntu, Mint, PopOs, Raspbian etc.

Unix Descendants(aka, why am I talking about all this?)


EVERYTHING THAT ISNT WINDOWS*

Open Source

A bit more complicated than one might think...

Free v. Open

Free software existed first.
"Free as in speech, not free as in beer."
Libre v. Gratis

Real hard to sell stuff when it's called "free"

So, "Open-Source" is adopted.
All free software is open source, but not all open source software is free (as in speech or otherwise)
And so, you get a pretty good mix....

Open (but not free) Source

You can do most anything with it, including lock it back down and making it unfree.
(BSD, Apache, anything MIT Licensed

Free Software

You can do most anything with it yourself..
EXCEPT you may NOT re-release it closed.

GNU/Linux, Firefox etc.

What is the internet made of, software-wise?

Historically?
Free and Open Source, overwhelmingly

Today?
Free and Open source, overwhelmingly, but with weird business models...

Evaluating Tools

Like I said, LINUX and TEXT.

But there's A LOT OF MONEY in between, aka PLATFORMS

"Platforms"

Any layer between "the bare metal machine" and "what you see on the web"

(this is a BROAD category)

(flypaper is not a bad analogy here)

Things to think about re: Platforms

Distinguish between those generally open/free .. e.g.

Apache, Wordpress, Wikipedia

Things to think about re: Platforms

..and not. (this can definitely be a spectrum)
Nearly always those with a for-profit business model:

facebook, docker, wix, twitter, canva, canvas, blackboard,
adobe, microsoft, react, d3, apple, amazon, netflix etc etc etc

Things to think about re: Platforms

Two ways to analyze the businesses:

Specifically, what will they prevent you from having access to?
What are you not allowed to have if you don't pay them?

(e.g. Netflix is VERY DIFFERENT from Facebook)


So: understanding Unix/Linux stuff

will help you immensely with understanding
the shape of the web.
ESPECIALLY file management, one of the most important things.
This is the main reason why I'm focusing on "knowing some Linux."

Also, "the cloud"


There is no cloud, it's just someone elses computer.

Almost *always* running Linux.

Web hosting, etc.

(e.g. the LAMP stack)

The other thing you find when you dig deep..

Relatedly:

TEXT.

Now, what's on top?

LOTS of possibilities here — But by default, we will look at the possibility of being self hosted.

more to come..