Subject: Will the net be the computer?

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 10:09:13 +0200 (IST)

Here are some thoughts after reading the market analysis at
           http://www.tsrec.com/netfuture.html

There are two reasons against PCs turning into relatively dumb net
appliances as predicted by the CEOs of Sun and Oracle:

1. People want to control some of the information they have.  While some
   (most?) information can be remotely stored, there will always be some
   information which is so valuable that the user cannot afford the
   consequences of server downtimes or denial of service or monopolistic
   coercion.
2. Net applications are not stable.  They get upgraded all the time.
   Often upgrades break current installations.
   So users with critical business needs (such as a project during the
   last week before a product launch) need a guarantee of stability of a
   software installation i.e. all upgrades are off.
   The surefire way to guarantee this is to have your own copy of the
   application's software in your own PC.

I wonder what are the economic implications of the above two reasons.
                                             --- Omer
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  see at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

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From: Adi Stav <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 09:02:18 +0200

> I wonder what are the economic implications of the above two reasons.

Hmm.

Consider the sourceforge model -- VA offers project hosting and
management as an ASP. Sourceforge is supposed to be good, but there
are commercial companies who have commercial projects to run and want
to use Sourceforge, but don't want to rely on an external server like
you said. So now VA is starting to make real money from actual
deployment of the Sourceforge software in the networks of such
companies. (It appeared in linuxtoday.com the past week ot two, but I
don't have the URL).

Adi Stav