[Freedombox-discuss] Joyent & node.js

[Dave Crossland]

Hi,

  The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.

So I was thinking, who has _already done_ a Freedom Box business?

Sure enough, Joyent did this.

$ whois joyent.com | grep Created
    Created on..............: 2003-12-06

These guys didn't launch a site that actually said anything for 18
months, and when they did, it was with a nice story that sounds
awful familiar to Gilmore's recent post to this list
about a "no sysad!" imperative:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050728023737/http://www.joyent.com/

Within a few months of that, they had a proper pre-sales page with
copy for their freedom box product+subscription offering:

"Buying a Joyent Connector is as easy as using one: $4950 + $65/month
service. And soon you’ll be able to get started with our hosted plans
starting at just $10/month for your entire team."
- http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20051013070429/http://www.joyent.com/

Another nice story:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20051026033353/http://www.joyent.com/experience/

Now, my vague speculation about what happened is that Joyent
realised the big bucks weren't in providing semi-freedom to SMEs,
but in cloud computing to megacorps, and that's all you'll see
today at http://www.joyent.com

But in that transition, they GPLv2'd their Connector software.

http://joyeur.com/2007/07/17/joyent-connector-free-open/

and, perhaps most significantly, they produced http://nodejs.org

I kindly suggest:

1. that node.js is the most suitable technology for FB interfaces today.

2. exploring the Internet Archive's copies of the joyent site
2005-2007 is worthwhile :-)

--
Cheers
Dave