WebOS

WebOS is a computing research project started at the University of California, Berkeley to develop suitable software development abstractions for applications that run over a network. The abstractions it provides include:

• a filesystem that identifies data by uniform resource locators
• a location-independent resource naming system
• secure remote execution
• secure data access
• fail-safe transactions

Research on WebOS has continued at Duke University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Washington.

More generally, WebOS refers to a hypothetical future software platform that interacts with the user through a web browser and does not depend on any particular local operating system. Such predictions date to the mid-1990s, when Marc Andreessen predicted that Microsoft Windows was destined to become "a poorly debugged set of device drivers running Netscape Navigator." More recently attention has focused on rumors that Google might produce a software platform.

File:Http://mr-1393.v-mirror.spb.ru/other/webos.jpg

External links

• WebOS at Duke University
• GoogleOS? YahooOS? MozillaOS? WebOS? by Jason Kottke

The WebOS meme gained popularity in 1999 when a much touted startup, WebOS Inc. (at first know as MyWebOS), was founded by Berkeley grad Shervin Pishevar and Emory grad Drew Morris. WebOS licensed the WebOS technologies from Duke Univerity and University of Texas (Austin) and recruited Dr. Amin Vahdat, Professor of Computer Science at Duke, who had pioneered the WebOS technologies at University of California at Berkeley where he got his PhD on his WebOS research. WebOS acquired WebOS.org, which was created by a young Swedish programmer, Fredrik Malmer, who had created the first online desktop environment. Soon after, some of the top DHTML and Javascript programmers in the world such as Erik Arvidsson of WebFx fame, Dan Steinman, creator of the Dynamic Duo Cross-browser DHTML API, joined WebOS. WebOS raised over $10 million in financing from Impact Venture Partners led by Adam Dell and Grotech Capital. WebOS was launched with a vision of created the first web operating system complete with a WebOS API allowing developers to create Windows-like web applications that worked a extremely fast speeds by caching much of the code in the local browser. Arvidsson later launched Bindows, a framework very similar to the WebOS API, that does much of this and is used by many large companies and the US Military. WeBOS filed the first very WebOS patents in 1999. WebOS competed with another start up, Desktop.com, which was aimed more at the consumer market. WebOS was covered by many media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, financial Times, LA Times, Powerlunch on CNBC, Fox News and CNN and helped spread the WebOS meme further. WebOS launched Hyperoffice, a full office suite, back in 1999.

Recently, there the WebOS concept has begun to gain popularity again with talks of Google launching a GoogleOS.

Financial Times article on WebOS:

The Financial Times Wednesday September 15, 1999

Whizzkid with a passion for changing the world

Young entrepreneur Shervin Pishevar is pursuing a dream to reshape the global software market - and his new web-based service might do just that, writes Louise Kehoe.

Shervin Pishevar may be Bill Gates' worst nightmare; an extraordinarily bright young man with radical ideas about software, a passion to change the world and a business plan.

Mr Pishevar, 25, is the president and chief executive of WebOSInc (formerly HyperOffice), a software start-up with 10 employees, of whom he is the oldest. Unencumbered by the complexities of running a large company or pleasing shareholders, Mr Pishevar is pursuing a dream to "democratise" the software market and "open access to technologies previously reserved for the few who could afford it".

As the new name of his company implies, WebOSInc has developed a web-based operating system, my-WebOS, a platform for applications that are hosted on a web server instead of desktop computers. Mr Pishevar is quick to give credit to Fredrik Malmer, an 18-year-old Swedish software writer, who created the operating system that the company is now blending with a full suite of office applications.

Rather than licensing its software to individual users, WebOSInc plans to offer access to the programmes as a service via the internet. This places the fledgling company in the forefront of a rapidly growing trend toward "software as services" that is supported by some of Microsoft's fiercest rivals, including Oracle and Sun Microsystems.

Yet WebOSInc has not affiliated itself with the anti-Microsoft camp. Although it may end up competing with the world's largest software company for customers and for the time and attention of third-party developers, this start-up has no plans to tackle the mighty Microsoft head on.

Drew Morris, chief technology officer, says the team is too smart to "pull the tiger's tail". Rather, they aim to reshape the software market. Then, it will be up to Microsoft to respond. "We are small, fast, agile, flexible, young, filled with a passion for ideas and vision and we will leverage our first-mover advantage to gain a leading share of a new market we will have enabled," says Mr Pishevar.

MyWebOS is a "disruptive technology", he says, one that will change the dominant distribution channels for software. "Since our technology will also enable the full realisation of a true 'network computer', the distribution of computer hardware will shift as well," he predicts.

Microsoft is not ignoring the trend. This week, it announced plans to offer tools to enable software developers to create web-hosted applications. Yet these tools remain tied to the Windows operating system.

In contrast, WebOSInc aims to make its software available to any computer user, no matter what sort of computer or web-access device they are using and regardless of the computer operating system involved.

WebOSInc will launch myWebOS later this month. In October, it plans to announce partnerships with some of the busiest web sites on the internet. It is also targeting PC manufacturers. The software company will share software use fees with its partners.

The business model has huge potential, says Chris Shipley, editor of DemoLetter, an industry newsletter. If WebOSInc's software begins to appear on popular web sites, this will get PC manufacturers thinking, she suggests.

With PC manufacturers under pressure to reduce their prices, they may well ask: "Why pay Microsoft to bundle Works or Office with our products?". In contrast, a partnership with WebOSInc could reduce the PC manufacturer's costs and also provide it with an "annuity revenue stream" of monthly fees for software use, she says.

WebOSInc is not alone in spotting the potential of web-hosted software. Desktop.com, a San Francisco start-up, is heading in the same direction. Sun Microsystems announced earlier this month plans to make a suite of office applications called StarOffice available for use free of charge over the internet.

These and other offerings "validate our space", says Mr Pishevar. Besides which, each of the pioneers of web-hosted software is taking a slightly different tack.

Desktop.com, which has revealed little about its plans, appears to be aiming at the individual computer user.

Sun Microsystems is out to prove the concept of web-hosted software, which could boost demand for its high-performance servers, rather than to dominate the market itself.

WebOSInc also aims to differentiate itself through close relationships with third-party software developers. MyWebOS comes with a full application programmer's interface and developer's tool kit that enables software writers to begin building applications.

The HyperOffice suite of productivity applications will be "open sourced", so that all developers can participate in improving and expanding upon them, says Mr Pishevar.

"Since we will be licensing our technology to other companies that will be hosting the software, we can focus on our developers' network and enabling developers to create web applications that no one has ever seen before."

If Mr Pishevar sounds like an idealist, he makes no apologies. A former student activist who involved himself in local education as well as global issues - he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, just two years ago - he now aims to become an "entrepreneurial activist".

Yet Mr Pishevar may have more in common with today's leaders of the computer industry "establishment" than he realises. Steve Jobs, of Apple Computer, was determined to bring computing to the masses. Bill Gates wanted a "computer on every desk and in every home" to run Microsoft software long before most people had thought of owning one.

As Mr Gates has warned that Microsoft is vulnerable to new competitors, so Mr Pishevar is already planning to avoid being caught out by the next generation of software entrepreneurs.

If we execute perfectly we will, in the future, face the same challenges that our larger competitors face today," he says. His goal is "to keep WebOSInc a very simple organisation".

The irony is that Mr Pishevar and Mr Gates, although they have very different backgrounds - the former the son of a taxi cab driver and a hotel worker, the latter the son of a prominent Seattle family - share an unusual intellectual curiosity and capacity that might make them friends, were they not destined to become competitors.

LA Times Article on WebOS:

LA TIMES: Software for Rent Might Yet Microsoft Sweat

Summary: A tiny "dot-com" start-up recently launched what could ultimately emerge as a true alternative for mainstream computing: free office-productivity software and the low-cost rental of other apps. It could prove more worrisome to MS than its legal problems.

Software for Rent Might Yet Make Microsoft Sweat

by Charles Piller Los Angeles Times 12/13/1999

<http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/12-08ericsson.htm> MS, Ericsson Team Up to Bring Information Anytime, Anywhere, to Carriers and Consumers

<http://www.ericsson.com/pressroom/comp_newtw.shtml> About Ericsson

Microsoft often says that its hold on the fast-changing world of computer software faces powerful new threats every day. It's tempting to laugh off that refrain as a diversionary tactic in Microsoft's antitrust wars. But a tiny "dot-com" start-up recently launched what could ultimately emerge as a true alternative for mainstream computing: free office-productivity software and the low-cost rental of other applications. That model could eventually prove more worrisome to Microsoft than its legal problems.

Understand first that this is still a conceptual threat; for not even the Justice Department will unseat Bill Gates as software's emperor any time soon. But MyWebOS.com, based in Baltimore, offers a provocative Web-based replacement for Windows and Microsoft Office as the central software tools for most PC users.

MyWebOS strongly resembles the Windows desktop and comes equipped with a range of free productivity and communication applications, such as a calendar, contact manager, e-mail client and Web browser, as well as a file-navigation program modeled on Windows Explorer.

Because these new software programs and files reside on MyWebOS server computers rather than on individual PCs, users can access them from any PC via an Internet connection.

The new company hopes to make its money as a host platform for a wide range of other software tools created by independent developers. Users would rent rather than buy those applications.

Most of these tools already are free on a range of Web sites, so why would anyone want to use a separate operating system inside a browser? One reason would be MyWeb's HyperOffice, an accompanying suite of free business applications: word processor, spreadsheet, database manager and a tool for creating business presentations. MyWebOS will also offer 20 megabytes of free storage space--enough for many typical users' business files.

MyWebOS is still in "beta" testing, and its test version of the product falls far short of its ultimate goal. Only the word processor portion of its HyperOffice suite is up and running. The other products are scheduled to debut early next year, when the service will formally debut.

Yet the company's goal is clear. "We want to turn the software market into something like the utility market," said MyWebOS.com Chief Executive Shervin Pishevar.

By utility, he's thinking of an electrical power utility.

Pishevar proposes to meter the use of, say, tax software at 50 cents an hour. Most people use such programs no more than 20 hours a year, but pay $50 or more for the latest version every winter. Under his plan, a consumer would save $40 per year.

Or perhaps your business relies on an expensive customized program, but your field offices use the program only occasionally. Does it make more sense to buy each office a copy for $10,000 a pop, or to rent it at $100 an hour for one hour every month?

In addition to earning commissions from software rentals, MyWebOS plans to become an "infomediary"--combining the collective buying power of its users into one block to command discounts on goods and services, and taking a cut in the process. Pishevar thinks this will provide sufficient revenue; no banner ads will clutter the screen, making MyWebOS sufficiently businesslike to run a business on.

That model resembles an emerging software distribution model from companies referred to as application service providers, or ASPs. Typically, ASPs structure pricing on a monthly or annual basis per user for corporate accounts, though individual plans are now available. For example, Fountain Valley-based Personable.com offers Microsoft Office and other applications for $9.95 and up a month, plus storage and access fees.

The MyWebOS pay-per-use plan democratizes the ASP model, making software rental accessible to anyone at a much lower price.

Pishevar positions MyWebOS as no threat to Microsoft (and even says he'd love to offer Microsoft Office as a rental option). But Microsoft should hate this product for several reasons.

First, MyWebOS would provide a self-contained environment, complete with software developer guidelines and incentives, something like the way Microsoft woos developers to the Windows platform. Users with modest computing needs--and that's most people--could do all their computing within MyWebOS rather than living inside Microsoft's Windows, Office and Internet Explorer browser environments.

Second, if successful, the MyWebOS model would go a long way toward turning business productivity applications into commodities, just like Microsoft did to the Web browser by giving it away. (Microsoft antagonist Sun Microsystems is abetting this process by giving away its own office suite, Star Office.)

"People have been getting ripped off with the incredibly high [profit] margins for boxed software," said Pishevar. "Why should a person pay $400 for an application that they might only use 10 times?"

If consumers and small businesses agree with his logic, many will stop paying for Microsoft Office (which can cost about $300 bought off the shelf.) And PC vendors--already feeling more independent as Microsoft operates in the antitrust spotlight--might start wondering why they should pay Microsoft for a copy of Office to bundle in every new PC in an era of ferocious price competition.

Finally, if Pishevar is right, MyWebOS.com and similar companies could turn software from a product into a service, undermining Microsoft's ability to push Office into every PC in the world. Meanwhile, WebOS could seize a big part of the Web toll-taker function that industry observers have long seen as Microsoft's hidden agenda.

"This is one of the most important trends we're viewing now," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with Giga Information Group, based in Norwell, Mass. Microsoft has already been hinting that it might respond with its own pay-per-use service, even though that would cannibalize Office sales.

To be sure, MyWebOS is far from ready to foment a software revolution. First it has to approach the reliability and performance of Windows and Office (though it won't need to match the bloated features on Microsoft's package) and perfect an enticing billing scheme for application rental.

But the MyWebOS concept is compelling. And several other start-ups--such as Magicaldesk.com and Desktop.com--are beginning to offer similar models for changing the way people obtain and use basic software programs.

Collectively they're a hopeful sign, as Microsoft likes to say, that the Web is making it hard for anyone to hold a lock on the world of software.