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competition is good?
competition is good?
Posted Mar 22, 2007 11:44 UTC (Thu) by nedrichards (subscriber, #23295)In reply to: competition is good? by dion
Parent article: Linux and flash
If in this case the Standard is Flash then surely swfdec and Gnash are the Orange and Vodafone or Nokia and Sony-Ericsson of the analogy?
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competition is good?
Posted Mar 22, 2007 17:58 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
The question is whether you're trying to standardize the file format (in which case you are correct) or standardize the programmatic interface (as POSIX does). I'd be inclined to suggest that competition in interfaces is a good thing until one emerges as definitively better, in which case a back-compatibility layer can be implemented so that programs using the worse interface can still be used.
This is sort of like what WINE does (worse interface: Win32 API: better one: POSIX ;} )
competition is good?
Posted Mar 24, 2007 8:58 UTC (Sat) by dion (subscriber, #2764) [Link]
Well, I think the situation of two different OSS projects trying to implement the same standard is much more like Nokia having two different groups compete to create the same kind of phone.
The result being that you split up your resources and produce two inferior products instead of one great product.
competition is good?
Posted Apr 5, 2007 16:24 UTC (Thu) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659) [Link]
Here's another analogy as a counterargument to your Nokia groups. IBM created three teams to work on copper metallization. One tried chemical vapor deposition, another physical vapor deposition, and the third electrochemistry. They all did great work, but electrochemistry was able to do things the others couldn't (like superconformal filling), and won out in the end. The result is an enormous win for IBM: now *everybody* has to license their patents in this area.
The moral: internal competition within a company, or community, can be a good thing, even when it divides resources. It's hard to tell early on which project's approach is better, or they both may have merits which will appeal to different end users or applications (like GNOME/KDE).