He makes a good point. After all, that's what the UNIX philosophy is all about - small, well-written programs that do one job well, and can work together easily. I like having a lightweight IM client, and regular email. From what I've seen of wave, I wouldn't like it. I think this articulates very well what I didn't like about it.
However, that's exactly what I don't like about a lot of Microsoft's software. Outlook for instance, tries to include every feature you need in your office, and it crashes on me all the time because it has too many pieces.
Please note that in saying this, I do recognize that the man they are talking about doesn't seem like the kind to always tow the party line at Microsoft. After all, he said their mindset was "scary" when he got there.
Has anyone ever actually used Groove? Or Mesh? They are both awful. I've heard Lotus Notes was even worse. I don't really put much weight on Ozzy's opinion.
That said, I think Wave is VERY WEB. Which is exactly why it stands a chance of succeeding where Ozzy's attempts have failed. I looked at the protocol and it doesn't seem all that crazy or complex. Robots can be written in any language as long as they can read and write JSON over HTTP. Gadgets are written in HTML and Javascript and are deployed over the web. It appears that near 100% of the gadgets and robots they demoed are UNIX-style "small, well-written programs that do one job well" and they plugin to a more complex UI.
Distributed, micro-kernel applications -- like the web -- do not preclude big ideas and large host apps. Browsers themselves are incredibly complex. If Wave proves to have utility and people use it, I don't see how it could fail.
Lotus Notes was a very imaginative product. I used it for a while at a couple of clients while I was consulting. One application was to build a moderately sophisticated document tracking workflow process. The other was to build various small databases for status reports and project status applications.
It was exceedingly simple to build simple network-based applications that would pretty much instantly replicate to wherever you wanted it. The applications were not very pretty, and all had a similar look and feel. It was extremely imaginative. I remember Bill Gates even back then, while taking a jibe at Ozzie for putting an OS in the product, said that he was one of the smartest programmers out there.
The web kind of changed everyone's way of thinking about that sort of stuff, and Notes kind of faded.
I am not quite sure what being anti-web means. If web means nice GUI brower stuff, then maybe, but if you think of web as being protocols with clients and servers, then I wouldn't agree.
I get the feel that Ozzie feels upstaged by Google. He's been trying really hard to do "collaboration tools" since Lotus Notes with not much mainstream success.
And now, here comes Google and boom, everyone wants one.
Yes, I see the underlying platform of Wave as basically distributed version/concurrency control. I don't believe that one must use any of the Wave client stuff to interoperate. Furthermore, isn't this just a matter of degree vs. kind? One could make the argument that the standard for an email message is overly restrictive or that IM protocols limit innovation.
I tried Groove back in the day, and it was actually one of the first "prior art" things I thought of when watching the Wave demo video. And, IIRC, Groove's backend was some sort of XML database....
i dunno. maybe its just me, and maybe i haven't read up enough on the plans, but it seems that the concept behind wave isn't as monolithic as its being made out to be here.
seems like its a big idea, sure, turning conversations into objects, but its not something that precludes writing smaller programs to do specific jobs with respect to the objects. google is working on the outlook-in-scale type application in order to try and fully display the possibilities of the wave concept, but the open system will (seemingly, to me, at least) allow for apps with specific purposes. sleeker apps to do smaller jobs and use the objects to interact.
Well I certainly need to learn more about the protocol itself before I can say anything more intelligent on the topic. If anyone wants to join me, I just found this site, which I wasn't aware of, before:
Wave fits the Unix philosophy more than those small, well-written programs that do one job do. The unix philosophy isn't about single purpose programs vs. all-encompassing beasts, it's about interoperability. In unix, this meant line oriented text files, and lots of programs that can deal with that. Consider 'ls': it prints in single column format when the output is not a tty, so that you can easily consume the output elsewhere.
Wave is defining a new set of interoperability standards for everything like a conversation.
If you're trying to say that the browser sucks, I don't entirely disagree. I'd love to see web-aware apps with better development frameworks take over, in place of trying to shoehorn applications into the browser.
The browser is not a very good application platform, but that has nothing to do with Google Wave.
A company whose browser requires an entire operating system, whose mail reader needs MS-Office to view documents is complaining that Google doesn't follow the - "small programs doing one thing well philosophy"!
Next they will be complaining that Wave doesn't use open data formats.
However, that's exactly what I don't like about a lot of Microsoft's software. Outlook for instance, tries to include every feature you need in your office, and it crashes on me all the time because it has too many pieces.
Please note that in saying this, I do recognize that the man they are talking about doesn't seem like the kind to always tow the party line at Microsoft. After all, he said their mindset was "scary" when he got there.