Shuttleworth: The Internet Is Changing, Not Dying

SOURCE:  CIO Journal

The world is moving increasingly towards environments where consumers and employees download apps from sanitized app stores and use software that is native to the devices on which they run. This is happening as a result of the increasingly important role of mobility in business and consumer life, and the security threats that lurk in the World Wide Web. Not only are app stores becoming more prevalent in both corporate and personal contexts, but companies are using virtualization technology that allows them to serve employees virtual images of software, with the effect that data is isolated from the web, and servers are insulated from unknown intruders. So does the emergence of these closed systems mean the web is losing relevance?

“It’s a real concern,” says open source software pioneer Mark Shuttleworth. But “the end [of the web] is not nigh,” he said. “I think the web turned out to be an incredibly effective way to prototype ideas and essentially prototype software really quickly.” But apps that run natively on specific devices also “offers certain advantages,” he said. And while the rise of apps reflects an increasingly proprietary Internet, open source software that is at the heart of the web is gaining in other areas.

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