[Freeciv-Dev] Re: do you really want to work on the ~ (was: registry)

[Gregor Zeitlinger <zeitling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Jules Bean wrote:
> (Getting badly off-topic now)
yes. just another comment.

> Actually that's rather a good comparison.
> ASCII is:
> Badly thought out.
...

> And yet, it's a standard, and because it's a standard, it's useful.
yes. that's the very point of standards. people don't have to learn one
thing twice. That's the reason M$ Word and M$ Products in general IS SO
GOOD. It's STANDARD. It's got nothing to do with technical capabilities or
productivity as a product itself or anything.
Economically speaking it's called the network effect that drives similar
products to only one, a monopoly. Now open source is the only way to have
a monopoly (which is good, don't have to learn twice) without having the
negative implications of monopolies: monopoly prices (where marginal
utility is higher than marginal price) and lack of incentives to improve.
I think open source developers are sometimes underestimating the
importance of standards and the resposibility of the open source community
to draw those standards away from Microsoft to only ONE. (like KDE or
GNOME).

Well, it has gotten off-topic...

-- 
Gregor Zeitlinger
gregor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx