A couple of unrelated thoughts have been rattling around my skull lately.
The first is the issue of competition fostering progress – or, at least, competition being a good thing. This is best summed up, in the tech world, as Microsoft is Evil.
Competition – the thinking goes – forces all players in a particular arena to keep improving (in some manner), and the ultimate outcome of this competition is that the end users benefit, as do the competitors (sometimes, and in different ways).
OK, but think about it. There are (at least) two basic ways a product/service can be considered improved.
- Product differentiation – something different about the latest offering: Faster, stronger …
- Lower cost – Cheaper to use/buy either upfront and/or in the long run
Obviously, these can – and often are – combined.
But note how the non-monetary way to progress is – for the most part – directly at odds with standards. While some product improvements may bring it more in line with overall product-type standards (browser that it CSS2 compliant), there is a good chance that this differentiation will, at least temporarily – move the product away from standards.
So this progress is both a good and bad thing.
Good – Forcing a change in a better direction
Bad: – Changing the status quo – which can lead to integration issues, lock-out tussles and so on
A good example of how a proprietary change affected standards is then-Netscape’s unilateral decision to introduce the FONT tag: It was not part of the HTML spec at the time, but it was quickly adopted (mainly because, at the time, there really was only one browser: Netscape Navigator. Mosaic was around, but it was an academic exercise [and the basis of Navigator] ).
While you can argue that the FONT tag was a good move or not (delayed CSS?), it did have the effect of getting other browsers (i.e. IE) to introduce their own tags/proprietary extensions. While, in themselves, this was not necessarily a good thing (ActiveX, BLINK tag), it did allow the browser to grow and showed the masses that this Web thing could be powerful – could move beyond Times text on a gray background with blue and purple links.
So, competition hurt standards, but raised the bar for when the competitors circled back and started to adhere to more refined standards (CSS 1 and 2, for example, or JavaScript).
So competition can hurt standards but promote progress – and (to a degree) offer end users a choice.
Standards, on the other hand, seems to stifle progress.
Perhaps the best example of standards stifling progress is Microsoft Outlook. The bane of most security-conscious folks’ existence, Outlook is still the de facto standard for e-mail. And – leaving the whole security and MS is the devil issues behind – it’s the standard because it does do so much and does it pretty well. It’s a killer app.
So, the OSS community has to come up with a way to match this killer app.
Right now, it’s Ximian’s Evolution e-mail and calendar application – which is, essentially, an Outlook clone.
In other words, it’s not really better (probably better for security; probably worse in terms of functionality); it’s just a different outfit’s product. It’s like comparing two 5-lb bags of sugar. Which to buy? The cheaper one. Sugar is sugar and so on.
So instead of making something different – taking a new approach – Ximian essentially cloned Outlook. While it’s a lot different under the hood, it’s the same to users.
Which is part of the point, but that’s not really progress.
Here, standards hurt progress; here, competition really doesn’t affect progress.
I guess the message that’s been rattling around my skull is that you can’t be too attached to standards or competition or too vociferously against monoliths such as Microsoft. Because there is a flaw to adhering to strictly to a very competitive environment or a very standards-compliant one.
And – at some fundamental level – standards are the antithesis of competition.
Standards are about interaction, integration, getting similar.
Competition is about differentiation, venturing down dissimilar paths.