Haha, sorry to have so deeply offended you with my optimism! I'd love to leave all your dark storm clouds hovering over the scene, but I think you're wrong.
Answers below. On 08/03/2016 09:29 AM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote: >> As for marketing, I'm still mashing this around a bit. Most >> interesting to me is that in a future where everything is open, >> "marketing" would serve to unify products, rather than divide them. >> In other words, you wouldn't have GnuCash vs Quickbooks -- you would >> GnuCash AND Quickbooks, each providing a unique interface over a >> common, standardized data storage mechanism for extended business >> data, of which financial data is a part. > This will never ever ever happen; it is not a viable option, it will > never ever happen. We have such abundant examples of this as a NON > -OPTION I am baffled how it still gets floated as a thing. > > Quickbooks, Google, et al have no-zero-nada-zilch motivation to > participate in such a model, and to bear the extra tedium, cost, and > infringement on product development or time-line. > > This is fantasy land thinking - full stop. It imagines that somehow > the underlying data model is irrelevant, which is FALSE, and is > recognized by any software development with any real life experience. The dynamics of the Android platform are actually a wonderful example of most of what I'm talking about. Think about the environment that the Android platform has enabled: programs are encouraged to use other programs' functionality through Intents, rather than code functionality themselves (this is microservicing architecture in action, albeit an elementary implementation of it). Programs can also act as "Content Providers" in the public space, laying the foundations for common data access. Most importantly, programmers can /choose/ to use these features, or choose not to, and slowly, we're seeing that they actually do prefer to use them (despite the fact that each programmer is seeking to monetize only his or her app). I don't deny that this idea has been popular in fantasy for a long time. My argument is more one of context: Facebook and MySpace were fundamentally equivalent (and they both had a much earlier ancestor, Geocities, which was also more or less functionally equivalent), but the context in which Facebook eventually flourished was different, and decidedly right. In the same way, I think every idea has its context, and frankly, you're right about one thing: 2016 is not the year to expect GnuCash and Quickbooks to work together. But 2026 is, and if we can eventually agree on that, then the early adopters among us can begin to lay the infrastructure (again, funding pipelines, data standards, etc.) that will eventually lead to such a world. >> Because collaboration infrastructure would provide very low barriers >> to standardization > No, it does not. The problem is not that the infrastructure doesn't work, the problem is that the infrastructure doesn't exist. What's been probably the most surprising fact about virtual communities to me is that you can scream at the top of your lungs without anyone ever hearing you. While we're highly connected right now, visibility and penetration are extremely low. In other words, it's possible to have great ideas without anyone ever knowing about them! This seems almost incomprehensible, given our connectivity, but it's painfully obvious when you look at how the system works, and it's a symptom that suggests an infrastructural problem. (Mass communication infrastructure like TV, radio and eventually the internet itself were the first step to solving this problem. The next step is to build tools /on top of/ these communication channels that work to address the issue of idea visibility. Google, unfortunately, falls short, because it can't yet separate discrete ideas from the CMB.) > >> and because culture would provide high pressure to comply > No, it does not. Asana, Trello, Wunderlist, Basecamp.... these are all for-profit task managers that have mature APIs that allow users to cross system boundaries. It's obvious that very soon, it will make more sense economically for them to develop common back-end protocols, rather than maintaining unique APIs that overlay distinct back-ends. They could all just as easily have continued in the vein Apple's system lock-in, but they didn't. > >> (already indicated by the Convergence of the Web Browsers and the >> availability of APIs on paid services like the above), > Note: "APIs", plural. For those of us with 5-minute attention spans, this is a big deal. The rest, however, can recognize that change takes time and work (and help: this is where an external organization like IEEE or ISO could step in and help to unify things). The existence of multiple APIs is equivalent to the use of the "Adapter" pattern in program design, and seems related to the lack of visibility that I spoke of earlier. > >> a world where programs are siblings (i.e., interchangeable units) in >> a "functionality hierarchy" seems perfectly conceivable to me. > Such a world is unadulterated fantasy. We've been talking about that > since the early 1990s. Interoperability is very very hard beyond some > lousy least-common-denominator that makes nobody happy. > > Notice that the world is trending exactly away from inter-changeable > components to emphatically more monolithic and proprietary systems: > Office365, GMail+GoogleDocs+GoogleDrive, ... all tightly integrated > ***within themselves***. APIs/Hooks provided for whatever bit of glitz > you want/need to hang off the side. > To define "the world" in terms of Microsoft is a joke that people got tired of laughing at a decade ago ;). You're right that as of today, there are good examples of traditional monolithic systems, but their days are numbered. Just this week, there's been a flurry of activity on the OpenCloudMesh mailing list for the development of the underlying protocols for Federated Cloud Sharing -- a HUGE step toward unifying cloud back-ends, including Google Drive. (Incidentally, they seem to have raised the necessary funds for this development in 5 days flat -- an inspiring and suggestive achievement.) And as an aside, I think it's interesting and positive to note that Microsoft document formats have at least been published, semi-open standards since 2007. While they clearly remain committed to the old world, they're at least recognizing the business advantage that open standards represent. Finally, I do agree that the "functionality hierarchy" I spoke of has been in the dreams of programmers since the beginning of time, and out of reach for just as long. Remember, though, we spent 500 years trying to figure out how to fly, and now it's a given. Impossible is nothing :). Kael
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