An open internet 100 years from now…
A excerpt trying to explain the purpose / mission of Mozilla’s new “Drumbeat” efforts:
In a nutshell: make sure the internet is still open, participatory 100 years from now.
The internet has become our global commons: a critical public resource that more than a billion people use to learn, innovate, trade, befriend and play. We envision a century ahead where this shared resource grows even richer and more vibrant. For this to happen, we must continue to build and operate an internet that is:
Open. Built on technologies that anyone can study, use or improve without asking permission.
Participatory, fueled by the ideas and energy of 100s of millions of people.
Decentralized in both architecture and control, ensuring continued choice and diversity.
Public much like a public square, with space not just for commerce but also for vibrant social and civic life.
Of course, this vision faces many challenges. Current examples: control over our digital identities and data is centralizing; and the growing mobile internet is far less open than the one on our desktop. At a more basic level, few people take the time to consider the internet as a public resource. They simply take it for granted, like air. Drumbeat is about gathering a critical mass of people to address challenges like these.
Sounds like a noble, and supportable effort to me.
I suspect this comes with the realization that Mozilla’s Firefox browser is likely to dethrone IE* at some point in the not too distant future as the most used internet browser. It may also be a response to “what do we do from here to keep an open source community motivated when you are no longer the underdog with a better product.”
* Some statistics this may have already happened. Possibly as early as January of 2009… see HERE. However, at least THIS market share study says it has not yet happened.