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Before the triumph of OSS standardization required multiple parties to come to agreement and then each produce their own implementation, so implementers had an

Before the triumph of OSS standardization required multiple parties to come to agreement and then each produce their own implementation, so implementers had an incentive to fight for their own objectives so that they didn't get backed into a corner of having to do unprofitable work. Lots of bickering about was was and wasn't worth including. To navigate this environment requires committees and formal standards documents. But you know what's a great consolation prize for not getting exactly what you want? Not having to do any work! So when Docker comes along with Docker Containers or Google comes along with Kubernetes, the consolation prize of not having to do any work is a lot larger than the downside of not getting to have any input. Working code is working code, especially if someone reputable has also promised to maintain it for free.

gen220 6y ago
Adding on to your point, the phrase “designed by committee” carries a strong negative connotations for a reason. People may have some gripes with the implementation of some subsystems, but they are free to fork and submit patches for review. This opportunity for grievance remediation did not exist in the old world we’re describing, and contributed to the outcome that standard interfaces were the unholy logical union of each member’s opinions and beliefs. I agree that the benefit of not doing work far outweighs the downsides, for most time horizons (<10 years). If you’re thinking longer term than that, interface standards might be better for you. But few people are.
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  I'm glad you've added that last paragraph, because I had the impression you'd welcome our new F/OSS overlords, even though I factually agree with your point about open implementations having replaced open standards. What I mean is that, while people love to argue about F/OSS free vs open licenses nuances ad infinitum, the reality is that power has shifted to a very small number of players (FAANG, RedHat/IBM, MS et al) who've captured F/OSS, without choice, discussion, evolution (of competing ideas). What you call "design by committee" can alternatively be seen as a defense against unilateralism with the power dynamics we've headed into. "Open implementations" means nobody can make a buck and sustain development and innovation. The only gain to be made is through integration and attention economy, creating perverse incentives. Take Linux: they're trying to implement an operating system for like 30 years now in a monolithic fashion. The power of Unix is not that it's the most advanced operating system, even by 1970s standards, but that it is a minimal portable system that can be created from scratch in one or two years. Linux being GPL hasn't prevented it from being used for a giant spynet (Android) nor a lock-in scheme ("the Cloud", k8s) taking Unix principles of site autonomy and small parts working together ad absurdum (the absurd part being that to shield against minor F/OSS version conflicts we need opaque almighty container orchestration and an accompanying zoo of tools, all the while we're doing largely the same we did 20 years ago on much less capable hardware). Take so-called web standards: the idea of standardization is originally motivated by digital humanism, eg. that we do the best we can to come up with idioms and languages for digital communication and its preservation, accepting inclusion over perfection. The reality is that this idea has been usurped by an ad company taking all communication into an analytics-heavy medium more idiosyncratic than ever, leaving a single browser capable to render web content in its entirety, where "standards" (HTML, http) are created by the dev team of said browser. We didn't need that; we had CompuServe, AOL, and desktop operating systems for this purpose.
  - gen220 6y ago
    Oh yeah, I totally agree that the long term picture here is quite murky at best and frightening at worst. > “Open implementations" means nobody can make a buck and sustain development and innovation. The only gain to be made is through integration and attention economy, creating perverse incentives. I don’t know if I wholly agree with this point. Especially in the most recent decade, we’ve seen a lot of the F/OSS developed at attention economy companies applied to completely disjoint industry sectors, with positive effect. I work at an insurance company, for instance. The fact that we’re using gRPC/protobufs allows us to have a small engineering team that hits way beyond our headcount. Happy to elaborate more on the point, but I’ll leave it here in good faith. I think that our dependence on this technology is a smart choice in the short to medium term. In the long term (10+ year), the worst case scenario is that we have to maintain a fork, or migrate to something more secure. We would have had to do this anyway, if we built our own RPC framework. I agree that OS’s and web standards are becoming less and less user serving, and more corporate/attention economy serving. I wouldn’t be shocked to see the web bifurcate eventually, between HTTP/HTML/JS and something simpler served over a simpler protocol. That being said, I do think there’s some value in having an opinionated author compelling people to conform to their standard. When that leadership is absent, you end up with something like the Bluetooth or USB standard, and everybody suffers. But at least those standards will exist forever, until they’re superseded by something that’s a superset of them. The same can’t be reliably said about the F/OSS we’ve been talking about. It’s all a series of trade offs. I’m not too pessimistic. I think we’ll eventually end up in a better place, but we will likely stub our toes and bump our head am any times on the way there.

gen220 6y ago

Adding on to your point, the phrase “designed by committee” carries a strong negative connotations for a reason. People may have some gripes with the implementation of some subsystems, but they are free to fork and submit patches for review. This opportunity for grievance remediation did not exist in the old world we’re describing, and contributed to the outcome that standard interfaces were the unholy logical union of each member’s opinions and beliefs. I agree that the benefit of not doing work far outweighs the downsides, for most time horizons (<10 years). If you’re thinking longer term than that, interface standards might be better for you. But few people are.

tannhaeuser 6y ago
I'm glad you've added that last paragraph, because I had the impression you'd welcome our new F/OSS overlords, even though I factually agree with your point about open implementations having replaced open standards. What I mean is that, while people love to argue about F/OSS free vs open licenses nuances ad infinitum, the reality is that power has shifted to a very small number of players (FAANG, RedHat/IBM, MS et al) who've captured F/OSS, without choice, discussion, evolution (of competing ideas). What you call "design by committee" can alternatively be seen as a defense against unilateralism with the power dynamics we've headed into. "Open implementations" means nobody can make a buck and sustain development and innovation. The only gain to be made is through integration and attention economy, creating perverse incentives. Take Linux: they're trying to implement an operating system for like 30 years now in a monolithic fashion. The power of Unix is not that it's the most advanced operating system, even by 1970s standards, but that it is a minimal portable system that can be created from scratch in one or two years. Linux being GPL hasn't prevented it from being used for a giant spynet (Android) nor a lock-in scheme ("the Cloud", k8s) taking Unix principles of site autonomy and small parts working together ad absurdum (the absurd part being that to shield against minor F/OSS version conflicts we need opaque almighty container orchestration and an accompanying zoo of tools, all the while we're doing largely the same we did 20 years ago on much less capable hardware). Take so-called web standards: the idea of standardization is originally motivated by digital humanism, eg. that we do the best we can to come up with idioms and languages for digital communication and its preservation, accepting inclusion over perfection. The reality is that this idea has been usurped by an ad company taking all communication into an analytics-heavy medium more idiosyncratic than ever, leaving a single browser capable to render web content in its entirety, where "standards" (HTML, http) are created by the dev team of said browser. We didn't need that; we had CompuServe, AOL, and desktop operating systems for this purpose.
- gen220 6y ago
  Oh yeah, I totally agree that the long term picture here is quite murky at best and frightening at worst. > “Open implementations" means nobody can make a buck and sustain development and innovation. The only gain to be made is through integration and attention economy, creating perverse incentives. I don’t know if I wholly agree with this point. Especially in the most recent decade, we’ve seen a lot of the F/OSS developed at attention economy companies applied to completely disjoint industry sectors, with positive effect. I work at an insurance company, for instance. The fact that we’re using gRPC/protobufs allows us to have a small engineering team that hits way beyond our headcount. Happy to elaborate more on the point, but I’ll leave it here in good faith. I think that our dependence on this technology is a smart choice in the short to medium term. In the long term (10+ year), the worst case scenario is that we have to maintain a fork, or migrate to something more secure. We would have had to do this anyway, if we built our own RPC framework. I agree that OS’s and web standards are becoming less and less user serving, and more corporate/attention economy serving. I wouldn’t be shocked to see the web bifurcate eventually, between HTTP/HTML/JS and something simpler served over a simpler protocol. That being said, I do think there’s some value in having an opinionated author compelling people to conform to their standard. When that leadership is absent, you end up with something like the Bluetooth or USB standard, and everybody suffers. But at least those standards will exist forever, until they’re superseded by something that’s a superset of them. The same can’t be reliably said about the F/OSS we’ve been talking about. It’s all a series of trade offs. I’m not too pessimistic. I think we’ll eventually end up in a better place, but we will likely stub our toes and bump our head am any times on the way there.