Overcome By Events or Rearranging Deck Chairs

OBE, the polite acronym to signify that you have become irrelevant. Compare these two requests to a tile server and a Web Map Server:

Cloudmade/OSM tile server

http://b.tile.cloudmade.com/BC9A493B41014CAABB98F0471D759707/1/256/15/17599/10746.png

Web Map Server (from ESRI example)

http://hostname/deploy_name/com.esri.wms.Esrimap?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=Oceans,Countries,Cities&STYLES=&SRS=EPSG:4326&BBOX=-124,21,-66,49&WIDTH=600&HEIGHT=400&FORMAT=image/png

Both requests return a map, but which one would you rather use? The tile server URL can be generated programmatically. The WMS URL requires a GetCapabilities handshake, parsing an XML doc, and formulating a request. It's true that you can compose a map with a WMS, but are developers (or even users) interested in all that sausage making? Amazon now supports static website hosting in S3 storage; cheap storage and hosting all in one, boom. Tools such as TileMill ease the process of generating tiles without the clunkiness of Style Layer Descriptor (SLDs) used by WMS. 


Don't get me wrong, W*S style services will have a long tail, because we've spent a decade expounding it's virtues to the Federal government. However, it's time we recognize the WMS is OBE.

UPDATE:

 "we'll lie in the W*S beds we've made"  - Sean Gillies

UPDATE 2: 
Nicely (or better) formatted comments posted here.