FIXZR

Will we see an OpenSource Facebook? If no-one needed to fund the multi-million dollar losses to run the server farm, would it be possible to have a ‘people’s’ social network? (or perhaps just a more profitable company). Without the need for big infrastructure, and big equity to build it, a world of innovation would be opened up. The technology to make this possibility real is emerging now, and one could argue has been around for a while.

Check out Wuala for an example of how a little bit of client side software can equal (perhaps even better) the multi-million pound infrastructure investment of big centralised service providers. Skype has shown how powerful the model can be (and still has a lot more to do). Why isn’t twitter built on an open distributed infrastructure model, like email is  (no fail whale, no dilution, and the scalability to absorb more and more functionality)? I await with interest whether P2P infrastructure models will receive the backing they need, or be viewed as just ‘too whacky’ for the mainstream (for now).

We have OpenSource software. If we get OpenServers* to run it on, will we also get OpenServices, or just centrally owned services running on ‘free’ infrastructure. As an entrepreneur I’d like a bit of the latter for a while, and then maybe a move to the former once I’ve cashed out!

*The governance issues raised by the concept of OpenServers would be incredibly complex. Who would decide who got access, and how much access they got. Would individuals be able to select which services they allowed use their contribution to the processing pool, or be able to explicitly ban certain services?