What is said (or not said) that you think this 1/2 hr video is unworthy of a watch? I think much of what Tim says is quite relevant. For people who fail to think of the larger picture w.r.t. large scale web app development, his insight is quite apropos.

You COMPLETELY missed what he said. He specifically said that "no one is asking for RIA...except for vendors and developers".

I actually take very few exceptions to what Tim has to say in that video. I believe he is bang on w.r.t. multi-core, REST, (lack of) RIA, the strength of HTTP and the lack of evidence supporting a need for push-based applications (i.e. the argument that poll-based doesn't scale is completely invalidated by the fact that it does as RSS, twitter, email and a host of other very large scale apps are poll-based).

No, the generally accepted meaning of "RIA" is the use of Flash, Silverlight or possibly Java:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_internet_application

Notice that CP80's "Get Involved" discussions page is 404?

You don't buy a company because of its products. You buy it for its innovation on top of those products, or for its customer base/brand, or for its finances, or for its resources (real estate, other assets, human capital).

This is very much not inline with my experiences. In most organizations I've been with, the "build master" is a FTE. The "server guy" is a FTE who maintains dev and QA machines (though may also maintain a few other corporate servers). The docs team spends a whack of time maintaining the documentation system. The bug tracking system is a load of garbage because no one is willing to spend time on maintaining it...so emails and/or spreadsheets and/or poorly implemented OSS tracking systems are used thus wasting time and resources because it cannot support a proper SDLC.

All of this is wasted resources. For the majority of companies, these should be commodity systems and thus could be outsourced to someone else to maintain.

Choice of outsourcing should be based on reducing resource cost on the development team, not on reducing the price. Development resources are worth WAY MORE than their hourly wages.

Sorry, should have been clearer in my examples. I specifically talked about outsourcing the INFRASTRUCTURE of the SDLC, not outsourcing the SDLC itself. The SDLC PROCESS *is* the business of at hand. Having a shop of developers maintaining backups, creating build systems/bug tracking, upgrading servers and version control systems, etc... is simply taking away from the process of creating software. Having other people worrying about keeping these turnkey systems running allows the developers to focus on servicing the customer base, not servicing themselves.

Many, many times in history we've seen this initial gut reaction to the idea of "remote data". And many, many organizations are recognizing the business benefit of no longer hosting/maintaining their own infrastructure.

Focus on the business at hand (e.g. coding) and quit wasting time on infrastructure (version control, defect tracking, build systems, backup & recovery, server sizing, etc...).

I don't currently foresee our organization moving to remote IDE, but if we decided to cut costs on non-core areas, outsourcing IT infrastructure would certainly be one option (we've already outsourced a portion of it).

Are you talking about the Darwin effect ?

Not posting just for the karma hit, but I seriously think that the Dirk Gently and the Hitchhiker's books offer enough mathematical insight to spur the imagination and to initiate effective conversation/critique.

Turning the world a billionth of a degree, probability drive, the end of the universe, Marvin's vast level of intelligence (though self-claimed), music derived from stock market trends...all ignited (or rekindled, or simply increased) my love of mathematical constructs.

We're in a recession, you insensitive clod!

So all of us are in India?

I would much rather sell licenses to a proprietary application than become a glorified freelancer

Then OSS is not for you. Make sure you don't end up competing, because you won't win.

Good luck finding that exponential ROI. And make sure you don't sit idle or choose the wrong direction...you'll be surpassed by "free" before you know it.

Yes, but then you won't be building a community because you've already decided that the s/w you make "doesn't need to be fantastic".

No organization with that mindset is going to build a thriving OSS community.

If a community builds up around the core despite the s/w developers, then that community will quite quickly eliminate the need for the core ;-)