Tim O'Reilly, the boss of O'Reilly publishing and a key booster of the Web 2.0 meme, recently posted an article about operations.

One of the big ideas I have about Web 2.0 [is] that once we move to software as a service, everything we thought we knew about competitive advantage has to be rethought. Operations becomes the elephant in the room.

O'Reilly laments that most of the tools for deploying systems and applications on open source platforms (i.e. Linux) are not themselves open source. Luke Kaines and others have commented on the article with examples of open source deployment and operations management tools, including Puppet, and others I've mentioned for system configuration and network monitoring.

Lawrence Lessig declares that the two camps of the Net Neutrality debate are those who built the Net vs. those who never got it. I don't think that's accurate, the telecomms and cable networks have been a pretty key part of the Net. (Found via Rafe, btw).

I think the real division here is content providers vs. pipe owners, and the attempt to do away with network neutrality is essentially a coup attempt by the people who own the pipes.

People use the Net for the content, so that's where the value is. The pipes are just a commodity, which are expected to simply deliver the content. Selling a commodity service means competing on price, which means low margins.