"Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> But how do we
>embrace principles of self-organization and at the same time prevent the
>suppression of innovation and diversity in the way that a dominant product
>like Windows seems to produce? Demand open standards?
I could ramble on about this for hours with breakdowns and where various
effects come into play (like, XML is great, but everyone gravitates to
specific schemas) and started to type it all out, but a more succinct
thought occurred to me.
The Network Effect occurs when you have a disparity in price, features, or
user experience (i.e. even given two functionally identical OS's at the same
price point, users will still migrate to one so they can both trade hints,
tips and gripes). One possible way to address this (if you see it as a
problem) is to break things into layers. At each layer separation you offer
the market a choice.
Consider a 1970's vintage word processor - you get the hardware, software,
storage, and probably printer as a monolithic purchase. In the 80's you'd
separate the hardware (PC) and software (boot WordPerfect with a custom OS
off a floppy). In the 90's the hardware, OS, and application are distinct
layers. In the 00's we'll likely split the data format off as a separate
layer (e.g. XML, public schemas).
At each point there's a possibility of choice and competition. It seems like
the network effect kicks in at each one as well, though.
On the flip side, each layer fragmentation gives the possibility of hundreds
of thousands of non-competing technologies. For example, there are a
half-million people in the US developing solutions on top of the Windows and
Office platforms. Microsoft competes with very few of those, and they all
make MS a lot of money by selling the platform and taking advantage of the
network effect that people will develop apps for the predominant OS since it
makes those apps more successful. Without the layering, these wouldn't
exist.
So it's in MS's best interest to factor as many things as possible and open
things up to competition. The Browser War wasn't won by making Netscape have
to develop their own hardware platform and OS (despite Judge Jackson's
overturned rulings, Netscape installs just fine on Windows, thank you very
much); other market forces like advertizing, marketing deals, and yes
(gasp!) OS integration, and a less than stellar job on Netscape's side of
things. Of course, it's all irrelevant now; an HTML 4.0/CSS 2.0 browser is a
requirement to interact with the web. No-one cares bits you're running, and
the money exists on the services not the client.
Also, vis-a-vis layering: if you want pure interoperability (the only way to
make choice truly fair) you need to have a common feature set or develop
against an open standard. But at the point where you have true parity, the
choice becomes meaningless since the alternatives are indistinguishable.
(Tangential diatribe about people developing Windows-esque window managers
for Linux; can't they, um, innovate instead? Or do they realize they're
trying to compete with mindshare and are aiming at a common-denominator,
thus rendering any uniqueness an burden rather than a benefit?)
If there was competition in the OS market like there's competition in the
automobile market, Linux, MacOS and Windows would differ only in the color
of the splash screen, placement of the icons and shape of the buttons. How
fast they boot would be a big selling feature, as would crash recovery, but
otherwise they'd be identical, able to run the same apps and do the same
work.
Conversely, if there was competition in the automobile market like there's
competition in the OS market, you wouldn't be able to fill up your
Volkswagen anywhere but Volkswagen stations or park in Volkswagen garages.
Sure, you could drive the same roads, and see the same sights, but the off
ramps would be unavailable most of the time.
Joshua
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