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One general way I like to think about this is that most software you use has passed through some filter – it needed to be complete enough for people to use it,

One general way I like to think about this is that most software you use has passed through some filter – it needed to be complete enough for people to use it, people needed to find it somehow (eg through marketing), etc. If you have some fixed amount of resources to spend on making that software, there is a point where investing more of them in reducing bugs harms one’s chances of passing the filter more than it helps. In particularly competitive markets you are likely to find that the most popular software is relatively buggy (because it won by spending more on marketing or features) and you are often more likely to be using that software (for eg interoperability reasons) too.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
Conversely, the occasional success Open Source tooling has is in large part due it not competing, therefore not being forced by competitive pressure to spend ~all resources on marketing, and ~nil on development. I'm not sure where computing would be today if all software was marketing-driven, but I guess nowhere near as far as it is now.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > I'm not sure where computing would be today if all software was marketing-driven Basically just look at the 80s and early 90s. Video games, C compilers, NAS software, operating systems and hardware sales were all almost entirely marketing driven. Before any serious Open Source revolution, you paid for almost any code that was perceived to have value. Functionality built-in was not something people took for granted. Open Source won not because you can't market it (in fact, you can - it's just that nobody is paid to do it), but because it's free. The ultimate victory Linux wielded over it's contemporaries was that you could host a web server without paying out the ass to do it. It turned out to be so competitive that it pretty much decimated the market for commercial OSes with word-of-mouth alone. It's less about their neglect of marketing tactics and more a reflection of the resentment for the paid solutions at the time.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

Conversely, the occasional success Open Source tooling has is in large part due it not competing, therefore not being forced by competitive pressure to spend ~all resources on marketing, and ~nil on development. I'm not sure where computing would be today if all software was marketing-driven, but I guess nowhere near as far as it is now.

talldayo 2y ago
> I'm not sure where computing would be today if all software was marketing-driven Basically just look at the 80s and early 90s. Video games, C compilers, NAS software, operating systems and hardware sales were all almost entirely marketing driven. Before any serious Open Source revolution, you paid for almost any code that was perceived to have value. Functionality built-in was not something people took for granted. Open Source won not because you can't market it (in fact, you can - it's just that nobody is paid to do it), but because it's free. The ultimate victory Linux wielded over it's contemporaries was that you could host a web server without paying out the ass to do it. It turned out to be so competitive that it pretty much decimated the market for commercial OSes with word-of-mouth alone. It's less about their neglect of marketing tactics and more a reflection of the resentment for the paid solutions at the time.