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The Internet has given rise to an enormous new industry: the Internet Services industry. This is an intensely dynamic industry, enabling many different types of interactions among people, businesses and information. But despite its phenomenal growth, the Internet Services industry of today has two characteristics that greatly limit its capabilities.
First, virtually all existing Internet Services are based on the traditional proprietary software model. As yet the free software movement has no formal presence within the services domain. The solution to this is the Libre Services model, a completely non-proprietary model for delivery of Internet Services. For more information see the article titled Libre Services: A non-proprietary model for delivery of Internet Services [1], or visit the Libre Services information center at: http://www.LibreServices.org
Second, the Internet Services industry has arisen in a highly disorganized, unstructured way, driven by a multitude of uncoordinated commercial initiatives. The various industry capabilities have been built in an ad hoc manner, based on immediate business expedience, rather than by any sort of overarching engineering design. The result is the Internet Services industry as it exists today: chaotic, uncoordinated, and falling far short of its true potential. The solution to this is the By* family of Libre Services. By* (pronounced ``by-star'') is a coherent, scalable, generalized Internet Services model.
Together, the Libre Services and By* models have enormous implications. The Libre Services development model, and the By* unified services model, can transform the Internet completely, from the proprietary and ad hoc model of today into something far more powerful.
The realization of this potential is large, complex and ambitious. It is far too large in scope to be accomplished by any one company acting alone, but instead can only be accomplished as a coordinated industry-wide effort. But the Libre Services model enables precisely the necessary large-scale, distributed, cooperative effort. Libre Services brings the tremendous collaborative power of free software to the Internet Services domain.
This document is one of a triad of documents that together describe every aspect of the Libre Services and By* concepts. These are:
A critically important characteristic of the By* services is that they are Libre Services. Many important elements of By* derive from the general Libre Services model, including their development model, value propositions, and growth dynamics. An understanding of the general Libre Services model is an essential prerequisite to understanding the By* services model. It is recommended that the Libre Services concept paper [1] be read and understood fully before reading this one.