I’m hoping there’s been a few crossed wires and misunderstandings surrounding O’Reilly’s lawyers issuing a Cease and Desist against use of the term Web 2.0. O’Reilly are the “Google” of publishing, surely they can do wrong? Geeks worldwide take a pride in their bulging shelves of O’Reilly tomes bedecked in animal engraved covers. There’s a few people venting their frustration in comments on Tim O’Reilly’s blog, but surely some sort of official clarification must be coming!
Say it ain’t so!
(Edit #1) here is a first response, but it’s not going down well.
(Edit #2) …and a second one! No-one denies they have to make a buck, but is no one at O’Reilly actually grasping the irony of this situation?
(Edit #3) …finally Tim O’Reilly responds. Huzzah.
Today I had to throw away some books. But then I created one of my own! You are all hereby notified that I own the term “Web 2.1.Aâ€
http://www.effengud.com/web21a/index.htm
Digg it, baby! 🙂
I realise its a bit late, but I have just been delving into this in more detail at my MindSpace Art Blog/Podcst.
In addition to sharing my two cents worth, I mention how it is actually quite dammaging for this issue to remain largely unresolved (even though O’Reilly has backed down) and I propose a similar solution to yours above:
So I propose an interesting solution to this issue. I think from now on, everyone should refuse to refer to the term “Web 2.0” and instead use the term “Web 2.1”. Not only does this give O’Reilly no leg to stand on, it also sends a clear message that the social web will not stand for corporate intimidation. So in this way, it is describing a new version of the web, which justifies an incremental version increase. And with an almost self prophetic irony, it is creating a new version of the web that the term itself ushers in. Web 2.0 has been around long enough for it to look significantly different now compared to when it first emerged, so I think it is high time to evolve to Web 2.1. Web 2.1 can also represent the related fights for Internet Neutrality (www.savetheinternet.com and http://www.itsournet.org) and Free Culture (www.lessig.org and http://www.eff.org).
To pre-empt any future issues, I’ll state that not only Web 2.1, but Web X.X can now be considered a generic term, so no one can own trademark control over it in the future.
Of course, the only way for the term Web 2.1 to become completely generic and for people to be free of unacceptable corporate restrictions and intimidation is for this idea to be spread and used. Ideally, it should not be used blindly, but should be used with knowledge of what it represents and why it became necessary.
I’ve now dug a little deeper, and found that there are quite a few of us proposed that incrementing Web 2.0 is a good idea, which is great – it might just catch on yet. I have listed quite a number of them in my MindSpace Art Blog/Podcst.