Why is the BBC Running Microsoft Ads?

I wrote below about Microsoft's rather desperate BizSpark. It all seemed pretty transparent to me. But not to the BBC, apparently, which has fallen hook, line and sinker for the Microsoft line:

"The rising tide of people building new companies, building successful companies using our product is good for us because we share in that over time. The goal is to remove any barriers to getting going." he told BBC News.

Except, of course, there are no barriers to getting going as far as software is concerned, because the LAMP stack has always been there, always free and always excellent - as evidenced by the fact that it's currently running 99.9% of Web 2.0.

But it's obviously too much to expect a technology reporter in Silicon Valley to mention such trivia in the face of the *real* story about Microsoft's perfervid altruism.

The Real Silicon Valley

Mike Masnick gets it again:

many folks look at Silicon Valley and try to replicate the outward manifestations (a good university, some venture capitalists) and miss the underlying details that create the real culture of Silicon Valley, because they almost seem counterintuitive. And the most basic element of this is enabling the free exchange of ideas (that engine for growth). Instead of doing that, most focus on protecting ideas and limiting that free exchange, falsely believing that hoarding information beats sharing information (even with competitors).

So, what happens is that other countries set up their own Silicon Valleys by focusing on protectionism (greater intellectual property rules, non-competes, hugely funded labs), and ignore the power of the cross pollination of ideas and people throughout Silicon Valley, which make it that much more difficult for any single company to abuse the trust of the people they serve. Should any company turn away from benevolence, that openness almost guarantees a more open competitor shows up in return (sometimes with the same employees from the older company). That openness drives innovation, but also keeps these benevolent dictators honest.

Web 2.0 is Dead, Long Live Openness

An interesting post from Tom Foremski, who, even if he doesn't always grok the underlying dynamics of open source and its offshoots, is certainly plugged into the right people in Silicon Valley, and is very sharp about spotting trends there:

Whenever I meet with VCs I've noticed that there is a growing distaste for Web 2.0 startups. The "Web 2.0" term, in connection with a startup, and as a collection of concepts, is very tired in this community.

I think this is good news. Although I've used "Web 2.0" as a shorthand for a group of sites/services/technologies, what is much more important are the driving forces behind them. And those, quite simply, are openness, sharing and the Net-based, distributed methodology pioneered by open source. The more we concentrate on those core currents underneath, and the less on the trendy froth on top, the better.

Big Blue's Cunning Ploy

Clever:

IBM, the world's largest computer company, has a successful venture capital group operating in the heart of Silicon Valley, yet it makes no investments in startup companies. Instead, it tells VC firms what types of startups it might want to acquire and waits for the Silicon Valley innovation machine to do the rest.