Two summers ago Washington state enacted a public smoking ban that prohibited smoking within 25 feet of doors and windows. Note the distance on Microsoft building doors in the picture below. Embrace and extend is alive and well on the Redmond campus:

Microsoft loves this law in the same way they loved Java! I wonder what the extinguish strategy will be?

FOSS advocates have spent many lawyer-years on legal issues to create a solid theory about what the world will look like without aggressive software patents and copyright abuse. But people are only now beginning to think about content ownership and what kind of disputes may come up in data portability. Beyond law, there was also a heck of a lot of code to write.

Will data portability take as long to achieve what FOSS has? For my part, I think the battle will take longer than we hope. The good news is success is as inevitable as it was for FOSS and working towards it will be at least as much fun.

Nonetheless, we will not stop social networking. Ever. Social networking is communicating with friends, sharing files, playing games, writing, reading, and sharing of those things and more.

Data portability is the key to taking the fad out of social networking sites. It’s also how we will avoid social networking fatigue. So stay tuned for the day when we can move our pictures, messages, and friends lists to any new service that comes along. No registration required. No re-uploading. No re-finding.

If and when it will become the status quo are open questions. A lot is happening with OpenID, OAuth, and other data portability initiatives. Post your predictions below. I’ll be writing soon about the biggest problems data portability faces.

Linux desktop users can try Kino (export documentation) for saving home recordings. You can export to various formats including Flash which drastically reduce the file sizes and make them easier to share.

• A product called UnrippedFiles: Store files online and share them with OpenID users.
• A wiki for planning and explaining distributed social networking.
• This blog.
• OpenID profiles. When you sign up, we give you an OpenID (see http://unripped.com/aklemm for an example)

Our goal on unripped.com is to provide an ultra modern file sharing service that encourages OpenID proliferation. On our blog and wiki we write about OpenID, distributed social networking, and other information to help you own and control your data.

Finally, check out your Unripped OpenID at http://unripped.com/username to see a tutorial with more information about OpenID. We’re working on features to allow customization of those pages as well. Stay tuned for more.