I read the recent piece about TBL and posted it to my linkblog. I appreciate the invention of the web. It came at just the right time. I had been knocked out of the software game by Apple. The software I made threatened them, so they launched a competitor. I was looking for a platform without a platform vendor, and had no hope of ever finding one, when just the right thing showed up -- the web. You can see my excitement in the early posts to DaveNet, my early weblog and email newsletter, in 1994. But where is Tim now that Google is attempting to corporatize the web platform? He's still talking about writing software that will fix the problem. At this point software won't do it, imho. Way too late for that.

We need him, and we need everyone else who profited from the open web. Why am I the only one protesting? Could it be that everyone else hopes to get a job from Google? Or a grant? Aren't you aware of how much we depend on the open ecosystem? And how fragile it is? Could it be they don't remember that Google loses interest in projects that we depend on and dumps them? It's one thing when they created the thing they dump, but quite another when it's something that was once a public resource that they took over.

We will be fighting for our freedom for the rest of our lives. But this is an easy battle to win. If enough thought leaders speak out in favor of the open web now, I think Google will back down. Let's get them to the table where we can talk creatively about the problem they see, and find a way to solve it wtihout them taking over the web.

We're all guests here, and guests don't make the rules.

The thing to do is to write a blog post in support of the open web. Send me a link if you like. I will read it. Let's start small and build it up. I shouldn't be the only one speaking out.