Hadoop & Startups: Where Open Source Meets Business Data
From the post:
A decade ago, the open-source LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python) stack began to transform web startup economics. As new open-source webservers, databases, and web-friendly programming languages liberated developers from proprietary software and big iron hardware, startup costs plummeted. This lowered the barrier to entry, changed the startup funding game, and led to the emergence of the current Angel/Seed funding ecosystem. In addition, of course, to enabling a generation of webapps we all use everyday.
This same process is now unfolding in the Big Data space, with an open-source ecosystem centered around Hadoop displacing the expensive, proprietary solutions. Startups are creating more intelligent businesses and more intelligent products as a result. And perhaps even more importantly, this technological movement has the potential to blur the sharp line between traditional business and traditional web startups, dramatically expanding the playing field for innovation.
So, how do we create an open-source subject identity ecosystem?
Note that I said “subject identity ecosystem” and not URLs pointing at arbitrary resources. Useful but subject identity, to be re-usable, requires more than that.