One more thing about Friedman's The World is Flat before I move on: why isn't he more excited about Open Source? It's not that he's overtly negative--at times he's actually somewhat positive about it and the concept of "uploading" (the ability to participate in the online experience instead of just consuming it). I have to say that I was expecting him to be giddy about it since it fits so perfectly into his theme of the "flat world." In terms of software, how much flatter can you get than free (flattening the playing field in terms of cost) with source code available (flattening the playing field in terms of opportunities to learn and explore the code). How much flatter for developing countries who can now redirect payments from Microsoft (to license software) into their own economies (in the form of local support for the free software)?

One more thing about Friedman's The World is Flat before I move on: why isn't he more excited about Open Source? It's not that he's overtly negative--at times he's actually somewhat positive about it and the concept of "uploading" (the ability to participate in the online experience instead of just consuming it). I have to say that I was expecting him to be giddy about it since it fits so perfectly into his theme of the "flat world." In terms of software, how much flatter can you get than free (flattening the playing field in terms of cost) with source code available (flattening the playing field in terms of opportunities to learn and explore the code). How much flatter for developing countries who can now redirect payments from Microsoft (to license software) into their own economies (in the form of local support for the free software)?

On the whole I got the impression that Friedman doesn't quite trust Open Source--maybe because it's harder to understand from the corporatized, brand-name perspective he seems to view the world through. Also, I thought he gave too much space to Microsoft's blowhard and he didn't critique their comments enough.

Take this quote from Bill Gates, which seems to me a little disingenuous: "[The Chinese] dream of starting a company. They are not thinking, 'I will be a barber during the day and do free software at night.' ... When you have a security crisis in your [software] system, you don't want to say, 'Where is the guy at the barbershop?'" For one, I would love to see a chart showing the average time to fix a security hole and the severity of the flaw, comparing proprietary systems like Windows against Open Source projects like Ubuntu. No contest, I'm sure. Second, it's possible to get professional service contracts for much Open Source software (as the model moves away from software towards services). Third, what's he got against barbers?

He talked about how open protocols helped fuel the "flattening" of the world, enabling different systems to communicate through standard channels, but it seems to me that overall, his understanding of an "open protocol" is a corporate monopoly instead of an open standard. ("There is a big advantage to students and companies that you can go anywhere in the world today, fire up a computer, and find a standardized Microsoft Word program to write your business report or essay," he writes). But the kicker for me came a little further along when he warns:

Devotees of the open-source movement will tell you that "the network" will establish new norms. This is true--up to a point. It is true that in the case, for instance, of the eBay community--a marketplace with virtually no walls, ceilings, or floors--the community adopted a system of norms by awarding one another stars for honest transactions and offering users the opportunity to provide feedback, making everyone's transactional history totally transparent to everyone in the community. The result was a framework encouraging good behavior that largely emerged from the community and is certainly maintained from the bottom up. But the open-source devotees are a little too glib when they say that the "network" always can be relied upon to establish these new norms. After all, al-Qaeda is a network, and the values it promotes are hardly enhancing of peace, tranquility, and the global community. Networks can also transmit rumors and lies faster than ever, and they don't always cure them right away...[Emphasis mine]