{"id":401,"date":"2009-08-26T16:41:58","date_gmt":"2009-08-27T00:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/netmesh.info\/jernst\/?p=307"},"modified":"2009-08-26T16:41:58","modified_gmt":"2009-08-27T00:41:58","slug":"the-open-stack-or-mere-plumbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/the-open-stack-or-mere-plumbing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Open Stack or Mere Plumbing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So what exactly are we all building here?<\/p>\n

OpenID<\/a>?<\/p>\n

OpenID plus OAuth<\/a> plus Yadis<\/a>\/XRD(S)<\/a> plus Portable Contacts<\/a> plus OpenSocial<\/a> plus activity streams<\/a>? That’s a handful, so some<\/a> have been calling it the “Open Stack<\/a>“. Is that what we are building?<\/p>\n

But what about RSS<\/a> (and syndication in general), iCal<\/a> feeds, widgets, mash-ups and so forth? They go beyond the “Open Stack” but clearly relate somehow.<\/p>\n

Today’s insight: they are all internet plumbing and that’s why they all don’t matter in the end<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"plumbing\"<\/a><\/div>\n

None of them matters to the end user, just like nobody cares about the plumbing for a faucet vs. one for a sink. Except for the plumbers, of course, who cannot understand why the world doesn’t passionately want the latest and coolest pipe fitting underneath their sink.<\/p>\n

Ever been at the receiving end of a pitch by a plumbing supply salesman? Being plumbing supply salesmen is exactly what we are doing when we are out there pitching all these acronyms.<\/p>\n

So instead of calling them Open Stack or any other fancy kind of name, let’s call them all what they are: plumbing. Necessary, but fundamentally boring to almost everybody.<\/p>\n

The question becomes this: a lot of plumbing supply companies are rather successful businesses, and high-priced plumbing supplies do indeed sell. What is it that these guys know that we OpenID \/ Open Stack guys don’t<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So what exactly are we all building here? OpenID? OpenID plus OAuth plus Yadis\/XRD(S) plus Portable Contacts plus OpenSocial plus activity streams? That’s a handful, so some have been calling it the “Open Stack”. Is that what we are building? But what about RSS (and syndication in general), iCal feeds, widgets, mash-ups and so forth?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"webmentions_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,60],"tags":[114,115,116,118,121,122,141,142,143],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big_picture","category-digital_identity","tag-oauth","tag-open-stack","tag-openid","tag-opensocial","tag-poco","tag-portable-contact","tag-xrd","tag-xrds","tag-yadis","kind-"],"kind":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}