3 ms·

Agree, but I don't think the incentives align as claimed -- with bad (lax) producers being usually commercial, and good (strict) consumers being usually open so

Agree, but I don't think the incentives align as claimed -- with bad (lax) producers being usually commercial, and good (strict) consumers being usually open source. I think anyone who has already made a thing in program X and then finds that program Y won't load that thing will tend to complain about program Y first -- both unconsciously, and also consciously (because if the bug is in X, they might need to recreate their thing, and nobody wants that). So even open source producer programs will tend to be favoured over open source consumers. The ability to complain at open source consumers is real, but I think this form of pain probably reached its apex in commercial software: backwards compatibility in Windows. Raymond Chen's blog The Old New Thing details the absolutely insane lengths Windows engineers went to to keep buggy software running on new versions of Windows.

bonoboTP 2y ago
I immediately thought about LibreOffice and MS Office. The compatibility has improved a lot, but things do break. And it is a showstopper for many users who receive documents by other people made in MS Office, or request MS Office files. It don't think the compatibility has to be 100% perfect, but visible breakage is an absolute showstopper for many users. I've recommended using LibreOffice to a small family business, but when existing documents showed up visually misaligned, they had to switch back. In this case it really doesn't matter who is to blame. For normal people who have things to do, the only thing that matters is whether they get the results they need or not. 99% won't complain to either MS or LibreOffice, they will just throw out the open product and just pay the commercial one and move on with their business. Similarly, maybe your new browser fully and faithfully implements all the web standards down to the letter. But if it doesn't load Instagram, or Reddit or whatever popular site, then users won't care whether the blame lies with the website or the browser. They don't even have the granularity required for that in their mental model to distinguish these things. They see: when using Chrome, things work, when using the alternative browser, things are broken. Conclusion: use Chrome. It's like this in many cases. You can stomp your foot and stand up for rigor or whatever, but it won't change reality that you merely insist that it changes.

bonoboTP 2y ago

I immediately thought about LibreOffice and MS Office. The compatibility has improved a lot, but things do break. And it is a showstopper for many users who receive documents by other people made in MS Office, or request MS Office files. It don't think the compatibility has to be 100% perfect, but visible breakage is an absolute showstopper for many users. I've recommended using LibreOffice to a small family business, but when existing documents showed up visually misaligned, they had to switch back. In this case it really doesn't matter who is to blame. For normal people who have things to do, the only thing that matters is whether they get the results they need or not. 99% won't complain to either MS or LibreOffice, they will just throw out the open product and just pay the commercial one and move on with their business. Similarly, maybe your new browser fully and faithfully implements all the web standards down to the letter. But if it doesn't load Instagram, or Reddit or whatever popular site, then users won't care whether the blame lies with the website or the browser. They don't even have the granularity required for that in their mental model to distinguish these things. They see: when using Chrome, things work, when using the alternative browser, things are broken. Conclusion: use Chrome. It's like this in many cases. You can stomp your foot and stand up for rigor or whatever, but it won't change reality that you merely insist that it changes.