The Democratization of Software

It's a strange new software world!

For those of us old enough to remember things like mainframes (my first ever computer programs ran on an IBM 360 model E22 at a local community college!), minicomputers (Dec PDP's, HP1000's, Data General Nova's, etc.), then the world changing arrival of the "PC" in 1983, the world of software was generally a "dark art". Very very few people knew what software was, and the population of those who actually wrote software was even smaller.

I personally learned my programming chops first in that same community college's computer center, writing Cobol code to schedule the lazy counselors to appointments with students (a brilliant idea of a new school VP administrator promoted out of the computer center, knowing that since the kid doing the programming was the son of a member of the board of trustee's, they couldn't effectively fight it!). Then it was on to writing assembly code for a PDP 11/35 running a customized version of RT-11, to drive and test a custom data acquisition board built by a small shop (Acroamatics) for the Navy. Then on to kernel level operating system development in HP, working again in assembly language on kernel level code for the HP1000 and the RTE (IV, VI, and A) operating system.

In those days, the late 70's and the 80's, software was generally incomprehensible to the masses. Literally. People just had no clue. By the early 90's that was changing pretty fast; people "knew about" software, but for the most part, in the same way they "knew about" automobile engines. That is, they knew software was there, was important, and "made the computer go", but not much more.

This starting changing in a major way with the development of the web and web site programming, starting with HTML (arguably not a programming language but let's not quibble). Suddenly a lot of "non-technical" people (non-computer scientists) were "programming". And as abilities to link in actual run-time software into web pages (PHP, Perl, Javascript, etc.) have become prevalent, this same group advanced into what is definitely the world of writing procedural software.

Now we have the iPhone and an open development environment for it. We are witnessing another huge shift in the breadth of activity in the creation of software, driven by this new ubiquitous platform. The opportunity to sell a few hundred thousand copies of a cool little application for a buck apiece suddenly brings the opportunity of "software for profit" right into the mainstream...and the mainstream is responding. We are seeing an explosion of a new cottage industry right before our eyes. I don't know the actual numbers of downloads of the objective C development environment for the iPhone, but I'm certain the numbers are staggering. The volume of applications available for the iPhone from this cottage industry is certainly staggering, and considering what a small percentage of actual development activity out there that represents, we have to acknowledge that a seismic level expansion of software development is underway.

Again, here's the point: for the FIRST time ever, we've are experiencing a "grand conjunction" of a widely popular platform with broad computing and I/O capabilities, with a freely available development environment, with a effective channel with a strong demand pull, with a world wide population who through web programming already has some awareness, skill and inclination. And viola...instant massive cottage software industry.

What are the longer term impacts of these "force vectors" going to be? I have several projections.

First, in the world of personal computing devices (which how I think of the iPhone by the way; the "phone" part of it I consider to merely be one of it's many I/O features), a free and open development platform is going to be a must. A single company can't compete against the forces of "solution" innovation and availability that Apple has shown can be unleashed.

Second, this "democratization" of software development isn't going to stop. SW skills are expanding across the population at an unprecedented rate, and that growth is going to continue and even accelerate. What exactly the impact of that will be is hard to predict, but I do believe as the world increasingly is driven by and supported by software, this is an enabler for the world's economy.

Third, the world of software cracking (finding technological ways to run this commercial software for free or for a black market low price) is going to continue to be a huge technology area and force in the industry. You can't discuss iPhone apps too long with friends and colleagues before hearing about the ability to "unlock" all the apps available "for free". There is a dark side of this democratization, a black market side. The technology race to fight those black market forces is just getting going in this particular market. Of course my company, Arxan Technologies, has been working for years with more serious users of such technologies, namely the US Department of Defense. These technologies are becoming more prevalent in the mass market consumer software space, helping to protect the product software that your son, your sister, and maybe even YOU wrote and published yourself!