Tata Nano Design Should be Open Sourced

While the whole world is focussed on the price of the Tata nano ($2500), I think the biggest innovation coming out of Tata Motors (TTM) is the packaging and delivery that is enabled by a modular design. Nano comes as a package to your door and you can assemble it.

What Tata should be doing is open sourcing the design of the Nano along the lines of GPL. This will spark a revolution in the auto industry with Tata as its spiritual leader. Tata could build a cult of enthusiasts around the world who will mod the base model and add to the open source IP of Nano.

Tata may want to take a few cues from IBM's experience with design of the PC. PC was based on open architecture. It was not IBM that made money on the PC but Microsoft and Intel. What Tata should do is open source the design and make money on the engine and gadget-ware that go with the car.

The last time someone open sourced the design of a manufacturable product, it turned into a ubiqutious entity albeit with notoriety. Yes, I am talking about AK-47 rifle. Tata has the opportunity here to make the world's first open source car. Common Ratan Tata, just do it for India Yaar!

Theory of Virtualization

IMHO, virtualization is about what resource you want to hold constant and what you want to scale. The most popular version of virtualization is where one fixes the hardware configuration and scales on hosting environment. This type of virtualization done by VMWare/Xen etc. is what most people think of when one says virtualization. We can generalize this to define virtualization types based on which one or two resources one holds constants and which ones one scales.

I think virtualization as a field is function of hardware, hosting environment, collective and application and of course the user (identity).

Virtualization Types
Hold Constant	Scaling Dimension	Type
Hardware	Hosting Environment	VMWare Type
Hosting Environment	Hardware	Grid Type
Hardware & Hosting Environment	Identity	Single Sign On
Hardware, Hosting Environment, Identity	Applications	Web Application Delivery Type