[Am-info] query about MS "Innovations"

[Sujal Shah]

On Fri, 2002-04-05 at 18:27, Felmon Davis wrote:
> On Tuesday 02 April 2002 08:39 am, madodel@ptdprolog.net wrote:
[SNIP]
> > making proprietary, undocumented, file formats universally accepted
> > for data exchange?  If this is the problem, could the same downside
> > apply if everyone used open source formats for data exchange?
> >
> >
> > Mark
> 
> Perhaps your last question was overlooked? It's a worrisome thought: 
> why exactly wouldn't 'open source' _also_ produce a 'mono-culture'?
> 
[SNIP]
> Or X produces an improvement and Y produces a _different_ 
> improvement; now we have 'diversity'.  But mightn't this potentially 
> reintroduce incompatibilities?

Open Source isn't magic. Source availability isn't magic either.  It's
not going to eliminate the viral and worm threat. 

Badly designed or poorly written software (which are not necessarily the
same thing) can and will always present problems.  The advantage of open
source is more clearly seen in the answer to your second hypothetical.

The nice thing about open source is that file formats won't remain
incompatible for long.  Not only can you see the source code for the
file format, you can usually just copy it outright.

So, having multiple applications for a given function is facilitated (i
believe OpenOffice, Abiword, and KOffice are all working on a common
word processing file format, for example).  Source availability helps a
bit, too, since you can document the format completely from the source,
then have someone clean-room a new implementation (though a lawyer might
have something to say about that).

This doesn't mean that open source addresses the monoculture problem,
though.  Monocultures are created by not having competitors, and by
having incompatible competitors (eventually, people give up and either
install several types, or choose the one that appears cheaper, a la
millions of pre-installed Office/Works installations).  Sometimes, they
are created by other factors (imagine RedHat and Suse, for example,
cornering 99% of the Linux space, and both deciding to standardize on
Abiword, with funding... we'd see a monoculture very quickly appear,
assuming abiword was equal or better (hypotheticallys) to the other
offerings).

I hope I made sense (it's after midnight here, and I'm about to go to
bed). :-)

Sujal

> 
> Must be late-afternoon Friday haze, not thinking clearly: does 'open 
> source' address the 'monoculture' problem?
> 
> F.
> 
>  
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------ Sujal Shah ---- sujal@sujal.net

	   http://www.sujal.net/