Dave Cridland: > Without interoperability, you might get functionality, but it'll be > either a silo or a monoculture. > > If it's a monoculture it won't stay that way - you'll end up with > version drift - in which case you'll either need to figure out > interoperability (hard to do in retrospect for a fracturing monoculture) > or else eventually suffer functionality fracture.
That is the best concise explanation of the importance of interoperability in distributed systems I have seen so far. Thanks! The FSF seems to agree: "We hope they all will be willing to work together to define ways to inter-operate." http://www.gnu.org/consensus/faq And while I am mentioning GNU consensus, their FAQ states this: "Isn't federation flawed? How can I trust a commodity server? In that sense, yes. You can't trust a server controlled by a third party. That's why we're looking at peer-to-peer solutions in the long run, and promote user control of their data, and end-to-end, secure solutions. But not all use-cases require that amount of privacy. Federation makes a lot of sense for affinity groups, public contents, and local communities. We don't believe in one-size-fits-all." Cheers, Andreas
