Tim O’Reilly: In the first era of the computer industry, lock-in was provided by hardware; in the second era, it was provided by software; today, it is provided by centralized databases driven by winner-takes-all network effects.
If only there were a Foundation which concerned itself with Freedom in all venues Electronic...
we will get there - user owned and controlled data - but it is going to take some real work that google or facebook certainly isnt interested in supporting..
the mesh characteristics will have to extend all the way to DNS and neighbor/service discovery. OLPC probably has some interesting solutions in this area..
Sam, I don’t think that’s fair. Taken to it’s logical conclusion, Tim’s observations point to the need for a ‘Free Data Foundation’ that is focused on creating and curating reciprocally licensed data commons, as well as the attendant tools, licenses, and advocacy, to compete with various proprietary data silos.
Obviously such a theoretical organization would have areas of common cause with the EFF, particularly WRT prying hidden or otherwise unavailable data out of the government in various ways, but I don’t think that the EFF itself fits precisely into that competitive niche.