According to the creators of the Internet and the geeks of Silicon Valley,

Although there is no clear record, but according to the creators of the Internet and the Silicon Valley geeks, the spirit of the Internet was eventually condensed into four words: "openness, freedom, collaboration, sharing," especially for those who believe in open source, an Internet spirit almost as inviolable as the "Three Laws of robotics".

But as the internet grows, it begins to engage and become involved in business, politics and even religion, and the so-called "internet spirit" is constantly being challenged and pried.

In some countries in Asia and Africa, for example, "free" access to the Internet is not a natural right for users, and there have been frequent cases of technology companies helping local governments to help limit access to the Internet.

For example, when Wall Street became increasingly intimate with Silicon Valley, the "collaboration" that meant equal relations was gradually replaced by an enterprise-style management system, with Apple, Facebook, Twitter ... These hot successful companies are more or less behind each other with the founding team members.

For example, "sharing" is being crushed before the law, and the Pirate Bay, which is designed to share all the information resources, has shut down all tracker servers in 2009 on the six birthday of the copyright agency, and its founder was subsequently jailed.

However, compared with the "openness" which was in the midst of intense conflict from the very beginning, the above three spiritual encounters are in fact nothing.

As early as the 70 's, the young Bill Gates, jobs were keen to participate in a variety of geek parties, software development activities, when Bill Gates found someone to decompile his computer program, the very angry call "stealing", causing the whole circle of unhappiness. But Linux, fully compliant with the "open" spirit, did not succeed commercially, but the completely closed Mac OS and relatively closed Windows eventually won the world.

The market economy is destined to recognize the principle of result-oriented, "open" has brought about the advantages of the results, such as AOL at the time of the ISP, for a long time only to provide users with their products and services, and then as Yahoo and other sites to enrich the Internet, the user may be lost to other ISPs pressure, AOL has to achieve a truly smooth network interconnection.

However, when "open" brings full competition to create a blue sea after another, "the high cost of opening up has led to a growing number of Internet products or services to choose to give up, such as the social network represented by Facebook, all have set up a information barrier, content, users and other data in a closed system, Reject Google's crawl of external search engines. Vint Cerf, the inventor of TCP/IP, once criticized Facebook's closed structure as "not meeting public demands for an open standard of flexibility," but it turned out to be the fact that Facebook maintained a huge information black hole that Google could not access to eventually Mickle , creating an ecosystem that threatens Google's dominance.

Far from "open", the most serious loss is network users. Mr Jobs's rationale for asking the Mac operating system to raise the start-up time of his year was: "If the Mac sells 5 million units and spends 10 seconds per machine every day, that adds up to about 300 million minutes a year, and 3 billion minutes at least 100 people's lives. In order to adapt to the fragmented Internet, the time cost of users retrieving and acquiring information is superimposed, I am afraid it is also a number that can not be underestimated. The internet group of fundamentalists is also disgruntled, and when Twitter cuts the interface of all third-party apps with more than 100,000 users, it almost causes the biggest public-opinion crisis in Twitter's history. But even with the noses of those third-party apps that have made a contribution to Twitter in the early days, Twitter has not shaken its resolve to control the ecosystem. Ironically, when Twitter, as a third-party application in 2010, wanted to access Facebook for more social graph data, it was also decisively rejected by Facebook, and frustrated Twitter criticized Facebook at the time. Why refused to open ". Even Google, which advocates the "open" spirit, has recently been exposed by EU antitrust authorities to the various exclusionary principles of its Android deal, alleged to be "abusing monopolistic dominance to eliminate competition".

From the standpoint of the fact judgment rather than the value judgment, it is easy to see that the "open" spirit is a kind of relativity tool which should be needed by the times, and the closer to the anarchist form of the Internet (and the early creation of Internet products and services), the easier it is to establish an "open"

The most famous is the IP protocol. In the root of the source, when the Internet was created before the computer and other physical terminals have existed for many years, but the different terminals can not be identified between each other, and can not exchange information, for example, the equivalent of two people who speak different languages meet each other, anyway, it is difficult to exchange ideas. The Vint Cerf mentioned above, in the late 70, when the ARPANET (US Vision Research Program) was joined, the IP protocol was created, and as long as the protocol was followed, different terminals were able to convert the information to the same "format" and be identified, and the LAN was upgraded to the Internet, Also represents the Internet "open" the spirit of the birth of the ancestor. Most importantly, the IP protocol is not designed for any CPU, it is a paper consensus without any political or commercial purpose, but it really inspires the diversity of the Internet.

Only accept the "open" rules of the game, to be eligible to join the Internet game. IP protocol's "open" spirit, does affect the early Internet design ideas, a letter from Yahoo sent out email, you can pass through the layers of relays, the final accurate and lossless access to another Htomail mailbox, Users who have long been accustomed to it may now have no idea how shocking a miracle this is. But as the weight of digital assets climbs and starts to affect the survival of internet companies, the "open" connectivity rules are losing out to "closed" ecological benefits, and this exchange of information becomes increasingly difficult, just as you can't send messages to your Twitter buddies on Facebook, You can't say hello to WeChat's classmates through line.

When Tencent and Ali's century war into the white-hot stage, Alipay finally cut off all the interface to the micro-letter, the Sound of civilization retrogression again, some people cite the science fiction "three-body" in the dimensionality of the attack to describe the internet giants of the immune, would have unimpeded the high dimensional universe, This is how the leading interstellar civilizations become inefficient and cramped by throwing two foils at each other.

In this controversy, it is meaningless to talk about morality, and if morality is to be graded, the Linux system, with the highest moral index, may not be tolerated by many. What I want to talk about is that apart from the reason companies are trying their own digital assets, what else is there to do to make the "open" spirit of the Internet far from us?

In 2010, Google and the US telecom operator Verizon held a joint press conference to recognise Verizon as a wireless network operator "has the right to maintain the flexibility of services", which is seen as crossing the "network neutrality". By the year 2013, Google had been exposed by the media to the French telecoms operator Orange to pay for higher traffic rights. These two things are basically clear about Google's position: in the wired internet, Google's stance on "network neutrality" has not changed, but the mobile Internet does not apply to the "network neutrality" principle.

The so-called "network neutrality" (net neutrality) refers to the need for telecommunications operators (ISPs) to all content providers (ICP) non-discriminatory, telecommunications operators must maintain a unified openness, equal treatment of all traffic data and application access. In the US, telecoms operators (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) and content providers (Microsoft, Google, etc.) have never given up lobbying for "net neutrality" to lawmakers, who argue for abandonment and the latter for sustainability.

But the role of telecoms operators and content providers is not always the same, especially when the latter's volume is getting closer to the platform, it will often take over and do things that should be done by telecoms operators, like-do you remember Google's crazy hot air balloon Wi-fi idea? The industry generally believes that it is because of Android, Google changed the "network neutrality" position, the reason why Google to the orange to buy traffic privileges, because orange in Africa has a very high market share, And Africa is the next continent to change from a functional mobile phone to a smartphone, and Google hopes to provide more priority services than other rivals, thus overstepping the net neutrality.

In short, when Internet products or services are turned from islands into hubs--represented by API interfaces, support for parasitic applications with no upper limit on the role of the platform-the role of the operator is very close to the model, and at this time, "network neutrality" from the moat into a stumbling block, was avoid, network users away from the "open" Spirit, also began when "network neutrality" deteriorated.

The controversial issue of "micro-credit charges" last year is in fact the same causal link. In essence, micro-trust is far from the role of operator, but the central feature of micro-letter has become increasingly prominent-it has a separate pricing system, access rules and the power to kill, as a "country in China", its open platform (like Facebook, Twitter's open platform) is not based on a centralized open protocol, it's a centralized form, like a public comment. Only after giving up 20% of the shares to obtain a micro-letter in the portal, Tencent naturally enjoy the micro-letter on the various interfaces of the arrangement of privileges (that is, "non-neutral immunity"), Ali felt nervous, not unexpectedly.

Imagine if Alipay kept access to micro-letters, Tencent successfully cultivated the user in the mobile end of the payment experience and habits, and finally will pay treasure kicked open, with "funds move" and other forms to provide the same quality of payment services, Ali on the whole for Tencent made a foil for the wedding dress. Coupled with Tencent's contention that Beijing East is growing (it is Jingdong, in the year when the spine hardened when the preemptive stop Alipay), Ali do not want to be in this sensitive period for Tencent's electric business dream to provide this is not willing to support.

Whether Tencent or Ali, are aiming at the mobile internet brought about by a new window period, the most is undone, only now small. Although Ali took the lead "with the world people negative me, not as I negative world people" from all aspects to avoid Tencent, but in fact, even if Ali does not avoid, Tencent is also afraid of Ali's new, micro-trust public platform several severe announcements, prohibit the "guidance to share the circle of friends" behavior, is mainly for those who cling to the micro-letter Taobao merchants (can be used in contrast, Tencent's tick-tock taxi on the spread of the spread of friends can be a gift of mobile phone calls), and Ma Yun is good at the "Ant Xiong" strategy is enough to deter micro-letter even fragile business ecology.

"Two choose one" Choice question, near to Tencent and Ali in a tacit understanding of the atmosphere of the common exercise of the measures. Micro-letter red packets of Carnival proof, as long as the user needs to be accurate, tied bank cards, promote mobile payment scenarios are not difficult, Tencent has access to, there is flow, there is user relations, since the time of the establishment of electric network is close to maturity. And Ali is to pay treasure wallet as the core of the struggle to integrate its mobile products and user resources, sniper Tencent, just for Tencent to increase the time cost, the real victory or defeat, or to be determined by the internal strength.

In addition, many people did not notice that in the Ministry of Industry issued by the virtual operator license of the 19 enterprises, Ali is one of them, "170" the beginning of the number of the paragraph has been Ali into the bag, this is Ali really want to pinch Tencent throat killer, To these two giants only in the taxi market will burn money to play the momentum of the fire, once Ali himself will be cheap pipe to do, there will be a chance to regain the initiative, at that time, abandon "network neutrality" is Ali.

Just, as a user, "open" The golden Age is indeed gone, by those paranoid with a strong idealism complex computer genius opened the door, the success of creating a network of cities and prosperity, but like the peace era does not need a lone hero, the more neat and rigorous business system is taking over everything, It is unwise to shout that "the fruits of revolution are stolen" is also a kind of intellectual laziness, including Google, Facebook, Tencent, Ali, including all heavyweight players should think: the spirit of the Internet as the Constitution, with the evolution of the Times need to continue through the "amendment" to keep the update and accurate, If "open" is not a good place to be, what is the bottom line?

The game process is lively, but we prefer to see the result of compromise.