I'd agree that some of the WiFi/HotSpot work has followed the typical pattern shown in GPL/OpenSource projects; lots of initial activity and buzz (Linus Torvalds will change the world and kill off the evil M$), followed by fragmentation and disagreement over standards (Mandrake is cooler than Debian, RedHat is for lamers, etc), then a transition into the corporate realm (http://tinyurl.com/1kji: IBM to resell RedHat.)
It's a double-edged sword; the same drive to create anew does not always translate into a desire to complete, continue, and finalize. Visions for the initial project are supplanted by new ideas and new visions; and somehow things never get completed. In a sense we're like hippies running through field throwing vegetable seeds everywhere with a dream to create a communal vegetable garden---then six months later when the field is full of food we're too busy to harvest it because we're off throwing around flower seeds with our new dream of creating a communal flower garden. So a sharp-eyed businessman buys the field, hires some immigrant labor to pick the vegatables, and when he gets rich selling tomatoes we complain about "corporate greed". ...dtw -----Original Message----- From: Julian Bond Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2002 12:37 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [BAWUG] Nicholas Negroponte (Wired Mag) on WiFi These days, when Wired do a whole print issue on a subject you know it's time to move on to the "next greatest thing". But then I spent a lot of yesterday evening wandering round all the WiFi sites. My perception is that the enthusiast activity has essentially stalled. There was a great outpouring of thought 18 months ago and now we're left with a lot of hard work and coding to bring all that into reality. And it's not really happening. It would be sad if the BigCos (M$?[1]) hijack WiFi and twist it to their ends just as we're on the verge of having a critical mass of end users. That's probably going to upset the people here that *are* beavering away. So I'm not belittling your efforts. Just expressing a bit of disappointment. And you'll have to excuse me for not doing enough myself but my hands are full of other things at the moment. JB [1]I've argued before that we need an MS Win hard/soft package that is simple to install and solves both the internal home WLAN but also plays well with the outside world. And does it in a way that protects all (ISP, WLAN Owner, WLAN User) the parties involved. That could be a great strength of the M$ package. But unfortunately it's unlikely to "play well with the outside world". -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
