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Re: [News] Op-Ed: Computers Gradually Turn to Remote Application Hosts (OS Irrelevant)

Roy Schestowitz wrote:
AJAX World - Who Will Win the Next Battle for the Desktop?

,----[ Quote ]
| Introducing: "Desktop 2.0"
| | Instead a new crop of portable desktop platforms has arisen, which some have | called Desktop 2.0. Examples of Desktop 2.0 technologies – at least the first | entrants in this technology sector – include Google Desktop, Yahoo Widgets, | Adobe AIR, Mozilla Prism, Google Gears, and Curl Nitro (note I’m employed by | Curl). These platforms attempt to provide an execution and development | environment that is largely indifferent to the idiosyncrasies, and therefore | differentiators, found in desktop operating systems. Using Adobe AIR, Yahoo | Widgets, or Curl Nitro, for example, developers can write applications that | will look and feel exactly the same on all desktop operating systems. `----

http://pbdj.sys-con.com/read/548350_p.htm

same article:
(((((
In the future, people will talk about desktop runtime platforms as if they were the only aspect of the home and work computer that really matters. The era when desktop operating systems dominate the technology landscape is coming to a close. The desktop runtimes will dominate the show and the company that wins the desktop runtime War will become a commercial juggernaut that will influence desktop computing software and hardware for the next couple of decades.

Within the next 10 years developers will identify themselves not by the language or the operating system on which they work, but by the cross-platform desktop runtime they know and prefer. What will make the runtime battle for the desktop most interesting is that consumers do not have to choose one desktop runtime over another.  Desktop runtimes like Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Yahoo! Widgets, and Curl Nitro can all be deployed on the desktop simultaneously. The choice of which runtime to use can be made after purchasing computers. That’s a very different competitive ecosystem than what exists today for desktop operating systems where you must choose up front which platform you want to the exclusion of other platforms.
)))))

So after the OS monopoly is broken, we face the possibility of a monopoly proprietary desktop runtime? Even the scenario of several competing runtimes is unappealing, as it divides programming efforts and forces software makers to go with what is dominant rather than what is technically better. This scenario has much of the character of virtualization: you can run any program on a given computer without having to reboot,

This guy working on this seemingly-proprietary Curl Nitro thing snubs the GPL'ed Java.

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