Well now that my self imposed, (aided by some friends from Adobe), hang-over from Wednesday night has subsided. I had thought about summing up what I thought where the key points at Adobe’s “The future of the Internet as an Applications Platform” talk.
Instead I thought I’d use it as a loose segue into my actual topic. Plus it would be far more ‘Friday’ to look a the current madness that surrounds the legal use of “Web 2.0” as a term.
Now I’m not talking about the next wave of applications delivered over the wire but about the fact that O’Reilly and CMP have upset a few people with the fact they are service marking the term “Web 2.0”, (I believe this is only in relation to the conference scene), and have subsequently sent a cease and desist to a “not-for-profit organization” IT@Cork to boot.
However it does make you think… I mean what would happen in Jesse James Garrett and the guys over at Adaptive path announced that they had service / trade marked “Ajax” as a term and you couldn’t use it (as far as I am aware they were indeed the originators of the word in its current interpretation).
Personally I’m not really fussed whether people wish to refer to what they think is a Web 2.0 solution by using the term “Web 2.0”. I mean I suspect the majority of people asked would invariably fail to give a concise description of that makes something “web 2.0-ey”, (cue a wikipedia look up); and no I’m not going to attempt either. Suffice it to say I just get exacerbated by the continuing trend in just copyright or patent anything that remains static for more than a millisecond in the webiverse these days. Still I suppose they have at least achieved one thing – They have indeed managed to monetise their web 2.0 offering – if only through litigation.
If you wish to see the flame comments as they happen check out Sarah Winge’s O’Reilly response (a potentially ironic name for the VP of Corporate communications :P)
Or Tom Raftery’s entry – plus comments…
If I remember correctly though, Tim O’Reilly was the first person to coin the “Web 2.0” term, and they have a “Web 2.0” conference, so it might have a point to try and stop others having another “web 2.0 conference” to stop confusion.
Technically though, Microsoft could try and copyright the whole Ajax thing as they invented the XmlHttpRequest handler, the main part of Ajax.
I’m guessing we’ll have to upgrade to Web 2.1…
Can’t really think of a thing to say on this subject that doesn’t involve Ranting frustrations – so I will post a link to my 2 pence worth on matter of Web2.0 covered a while back.
PS anyone copyrighting Web3.0 yet – Remember all of you 6 minute apps is the magic number :P
Sorry forgot to say – love the surname :P
Today I had to throw away some books. But then I created one of my own! You are all hereby notified that I own the term “Web 2.1.A”
http://www.effengud.com/web21a/index.htm
Digg it, baby! :-)