Open Source and Technology Predictions for 2012 · patrick dot wagstrom dot net

As I did for 2010 and 2011, I’ve created a set of predictions for the coming year around Open Source. However, this year I’ve expanded it to the general field of technology. These are all fairly specific things that I should be able to verify sometime near the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013.

SOPA dies a bloody death - While I don’t think that Google, Wikipedia, Amazon, and Facebook will enact the “Nuclear Option” for stopping SOPA (largely because of business agreements that Google, Amazon, and Facebook all have with other companies), I do expect that if this horribly misguided bill looks like it will pass that they will do something VERY dramatic. This bill is a critical threat to the internet and freedom because it breaks DNS, makes sites more vulnerable to attacks, and circumvents the judicial process. It must be stopped. Also, Senator Franken, I’m glad you’re my senator, but you’ve lost my vote and all future support if you continue to support SOPA and PIPA.
Privacy regulations for children under 13 are revisited - This is a bit of a risky prediction because Congress has enacted hordes of horrible laws under the guise of protecting children. However, as it the internet becomes more important for younger children, it is inevitable that we’ll need to revisit laws regarding children under 13 using internet services. We can’t have Google go around disabling children’s accounts when they create ads showing email accounts for children. Facebook likewise faces similar challenges. Maybe we’ll finally get the point where we inject common sense and let parents do their job of monitoring their children. Or, probably not. In any case, look for child online privacy to be revisited in the next year.
Major automobile software fault - I drive a pretty bare bones car, but many folks like to have cars with all the bells and whistles. According to an IEEE Spectrum report, premium cars contain more than 100 million lines of code. I know enough about software to know that’s a problem. Given that automobile manufacturers seek to reuse components within their own brand, or even with their competitors, and it is rather difficult to upgrade the software on these automobiles, it is only a matter of time before a major fault shows up across an entire brand. Some people may point to Toyota’s problem with “unintended acceleration”, to which I’ll gently direct to the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency’s final report on unintended acceleration in Toyota automobiles which found no such evidence.
Boxee calls it quits - Boxee already called it quits on desktop after releasing a completely unusable new version. They’re facing a mountain of challenges from content providers and hardware manufacturers. The Boxee Box has only been kinda warmly received, and although the forthcoming Live TV add on will help, it still only works with ATSC/Clear QAM. Unless they get support for CableCard and recording I don’t see how Boxee can survive.
GNOME falls apart - GNOME has seen better days. Gone are the halcyon days when I used to eagerly await the new release of GNOME in March and September. Now new GNOME releases are more of a “meh” thing. With so many things on the web the operating system just doesn’t matter as much. Combine this with fragmentation among the distros, thanks to Canonical being blockheaded with Unity, and formerly large sponsors dropping away from the project (Maemo, Meego, Tizen, who cares?), and I think that GNOME may reach the breaking point this year. Unfortunately, problems in GNOME will cascade to the rest of the Linux desktop world. By the way, did you hear that 2012 is the year of Linux desktop? Just like it has been every year since I started using the Linux desktop seventeen years ago. Ugh.
Netflix gets acquired and Reed Hastings gets fired - While there have been companies that have been more mismanaged, Tyco and Enron come to mind, there are few that have messed up so spectacularly without violating any laws. Netflix probably did the right thing in trying to jettison the expensive and dying disc business, but going streaming only, which is the way of the future, leaves them at the mercy of the studios. Netflix will be acquired, most likely by a large network provider without content, such as Verizon. There’s an off chance that given it’s current $3B valuation it may get swooped up by private capital, but that seems unlikely as private capital lacks both content and distribution mechanisms. In fact, Netflix going private is almost as unlikely as Reed Hastings finishing the year as CEO of Netflix. Need more evidence for this future? Check out their stock price over the past year:

(Share Price of Netflix for Prior 12 Months from Google Finance)

7. **Go gets a killer project** - I think that [Go programming language from Google](http://golang.org/) has a lot of interesting concepts that make it nice alternative to the current dominant languages of Java and C#. Unfortunately, it needs a killer project before people will start to use it (similar to Rails and Ruby). My guess is that this is the year that will happen. Expect Google to show off something big and cool at I/O in June that attracts tens of thousands new developers to the platform.

Android continues to grow, but not at the expense of iOS - this will be a continuation of current trends. Both Android and iOS are growing. Pundits say this is at the expense of RIM and Microsoft, but in reality its just that its more people moving from feature phones to smart phones that they use only as phones with nice on screen keyboards. iOS will remain the dominant smartphone platform in terms of mindshare.

Smartphone Maket Share in the United States (from comScore via TechCrunch)

Internet political meltdown - After watching the SOPA hearings live it became clear that most of our politicians don’t have a clue about how the internet and social media work. Even those who have been bitten by the internet (Googled “Santorum” before?) don’t really understand how poor actions and the genius of a single individual can cause such a huge problem. Expect at least one candidate for Federal office (congress or president) to have a meltdown due to something that happened on the Internet. Of course, some might say this already happened to George Allen with “macaca”, but I’m expecting something bigger this year.
Shakeup at the Free Software Foundation - Let’s be perfectly clear: I do not wish ill upon the Free Software Foundation or Richard Stallman. They do great things for freedom and I am eternally in their debt. However, the divide between the FSF and the rest of the Open Source world continues to grow. The GPL is no longer the go-to license for new Open Source projects. Their campaigns against DRM and service based systems are negative campaigns. If you want to win people to your side, do something that gets people excited and presents a better alternative. When that happens the FSF will thrive. Unfortunately, the FSF recently has engaged in childish spats around software freedom and when you lower yourself to that level you have to expect that one of your spokepeople will eventually do something massively stupid and cause a major controversy to ensue.

So, what do you think? Did I pick a bunch of easy predictions for 2012? What do you think will happen this year?