The Contradiction of Internet

I find it interesting how Bill Thompson describes the contradiction at the heart of internet in his most recent comment at BBC Tech: "It is a mutual enterprise that relies absolutely on co-operation, but the resulting network supports the harshest and most brutal free market ever created."

I think that was a fair description of internet as a whole. It could not exist without all the joint standards and recommendations (eg. those of W3C), but is used as the playground of many commercial ventures, many of which pay no tribute to this spirit of 'mutualism', as Thompson calls it.

I believe it is this contradiction that causes the collision of open source and free software movements, and commercial software developers like Microsoft. They represent the different aspects of what contemporary internet is all about. The open standards people may have been here first, but today internet belongs to all of us.

All in all, I have to agree with Thompson in his conclusion: both aspects are important. While making certain that important standards continue to be open and free, we must allow internet to function as a free market.