layout: post title: "Telepocalypse: Open systems will continue to crush closed ones" created: 1081756651 categories:

• Wireless, Cellular, and Mobile
• Open Source

Prediction: open systems will continue to crush closed ones. Why? The obvious reason is that open ones are fitter in an evolutionary sense. An application that almost hits the mark is easily superceded by one that scores a bullseye. In many ways, that’s the core concept of end-to-end or the stupid network.

There’s a less obvious reason, too. It’s what I would call the openness ratchet effect. The easy, zero cost way of differentiating yourself from your competitors without incurring product development costs is to be a bit more open. Someone will always make the jump.

Telepocalypse: Lock-down screw-up

What industry is Martin talking about? Could be any of a number of technology ones, but in this case, he's talking about the cell phone industry, and then extrapolates to the rest of telecom. Great quote at the end: "new value creation will ultimately route around your toll gate".

Made me think about my softswitch mumbling.