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What's the problem with fragmentation? I guess you're thinking of wasted effort, split mindshare amongst users. But for me, fragmentation is one of the key ben
by blowski 6y ago
What's the problem with fragmentation? I guess you're thinking of wasted effort, split mindshare amongst users.
But for me, fragmentation is one of the key benefits of open source. Let thousands of alternatives bloom!
- alpaca128 6y agoAbsolutely. I have grown to dislike this often repeated "don't reinvent the wheel" stance. After some thought you realise 100% of mastering any art is based on imitating and rebuilding existing achievements, because that gives us the basis for aiming even higher with our own ideas. When we blindly copy our own "Hello World" program into a text file nobody bats an eye. When a group of musicians play a metal song on classical instruments it's called a cover. But when someone builds their own database to have some fun and get better in-depth understanding of the tech you will always find someone whining about the not-invented-here-syndrome. Effort isn't wasted just because it didn't change the world.
- tfehring 6y agoAlso confusion and decision paralysis for new users, as well as limiting new features to only a subset of users unless someone takes the time to re-implement them. And lots of FOSS projects end up as abandonware, and consolidation can increase the share of users whose software is actively maintained. Split mindshare is also a big deal for applications with strong network effects, though probably not for something like this.
- blowski 6y agoSo, reductio ad absurdum, we shouldn't have bothered with Ruby when we already had Python. Or Linux since we had Unix. Or React since we had Angular. I agree that launching similar products has its own downsides, but the upside is that competition acts like evolution - it strengthens the best products, and destroys the weak ones.