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"No problem should ever have to be solved twice." I sincerely disagree. There is rarely a problem for which there is one strictly optimal solution. And compe

by niggler 14y ago

"No problem should ever have to be solved twice." I sincerely disagree. There is rarely a problem for which there is one strictly optimal solution. And competition (friendly or otherwise) between solutions leads to progress. As an example, take the browser wars. As opposed to accepting Mozilla/Firefox, Apple and Google's efforts have moved the bar much further than if they just decided to use Mozilla's solution "What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels." If it weren't for LZW patent enforcement, we wouldn't have formats like PNG ... (I guess, "necessity is the mother of innovation")

mindcrime 14y ago
> I sincerely disagree. There is rarely a problem for which > there is one strictly optimal solution. And competition > (friendly or otherwise) between solutions leads to > progress You know, he does make the point that it is OK to pursue a superior solution: Note, however, that "No problem should ever have to be solved twice." does not imply that you have to consider all existing solutions sacred, or that there is only one right solution to any given problem. Often, we learn a lot about the problem that we didn't know before by studying the first cut at a solution. It's OK, and often necessary, to decide that we can do better.
- niggler 14y ago
  If you read the rest of my response, you'd see my response to his clarification: "What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels." If it weren't for LZW patent enforcement, we wouldn't have formats like PNG ... (I guess, "necessity is the mother of innovation")
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    If you read the rest of my response, you'd see my response to his clarification: Of course I read all of your response. The second part seems, to me, to be addressing a different issue altogether. You claim to strongly disagree with "no problem should be solved twice" but your statement about why you disagree jibes with what ESR himself said. I'm not sure what it is you disagree with him about in the general sense. The second part, sure, you are saying that patent enforcement can result in better solutions due to the "necessity being the mother of invention" factor, whereas Raymond completely objects to "artificial barriers". But that's just a detail, surely?
  - belorn 14y ago
    If necessity is the mother of innovation, then maximizing necessity should be our goal right? This line of thought would however turn silly quite fast, with "lets have wars!", and "lets have random barriers everywhere". If there weren't patents on formats, people would still make new formats. Crappy energy inefficient and data expensive algorithms get replaced when basic research (unaffected by patents mind you) show that better ways exist. Here is a thought: figure out a new algorithm that lower the bandwidth use of Google by 25%. They would surely pay you with heaps of money no matter if there is a patent involved or not.
pdonis 14y ago
As opposed to accepting Mozilla/Firefox, Apple and Google's efforts have moved the bar much further than if they just decided to use Mozilla's solution Solution to what problem? I would say that the reason browsers have continued to evolve is that all of the existing ones have always sucked; whatever problem past browsers thought they were solving, it wasn't sufficient to solve the real problems users were having with existing browsers. In short, no problem should ever have to be solved twice; but it does need to be solved once.
sophacles 14y ago
I think your second point is pretty contestable. Sure, png was a direct response to the gif/lzw debacle, but it is equally probable that someone would have said "you know, we could probably do better". For example, JSON didn't arise from the XML patents (of which there are none), it came from someone saying, "Seriously we all know this thing we're doing with XML could be better", and doing it. Same for a lot of programming languages. Same for a lot of things. Technology seems to progress by a combination of people's interest and snagging at the low-hanging fruit of "this has become unbearable". At some point, a better gif would have happened just because it hit the proper pain point.

by niggler 14y ago

mindcrime 14y ago

> I sincerely disagree. There is rarely a problem for which > there is one strictly optimal solution. And competition > (friendly or otherwise) between solutions leads to > progress You know, he does make the point that it is OK to pursue a superior solution: Note, however, that "No problem should ever have to be solved twice." does not imply that you have to consider all existing solutions sacred, or that there is only one right solution to any given problem. Often, we learn a lot about the problem that we didn't know before by studying the first cut at a solution. It's OK, and often necessary, to decide that we can do better.

niggler 14y ago
If you read the rest of my response, you'd see my response to his clarification: "What's not OK is artificial technical, legal, or institutional barriers (like closed-source code) that prevent a good solution from being re-used and force people to re-invent wheels." If it weren't for LZW patent enforcement, we wouldn't have formats like PNG ... (I guess, "necessity is the mother of innovation")
- mindcrime 14y ago
  If you read the rest of my response, you'd see my response to his clarification: Of course I read all of your response. The second part seems, to me, to be addressing a different issue altogether. You claim to strongly disagree with "no problem should be solved twice" but your statement about why you disagree jibes with what ESR himself said. I'm not sure what it is you disagree with him about in the general sense. The second part, sure, you are saying that patent enforcement can result in better solutions due to the "necessity being the mother of invention" factor, whereas Raymond completely objects to "artificial barriers". But that's just a detail, surely?
- belorn 14y ago
  If necessity is the mother of innovation, then maximizing necessity should be our goal right? This line of thought would however turn silly quite fast, with "lets have wars!", and "lets have random barriers everywhere". If there weren't patents on formats, people would still make new formats. Crappy energy inefficient and data expensive algorithms get replaced when basic research (unaffected by patents mind you) show that better ways exist. Here is a thought: figure out a new algorithm that lower the bandwidth use of Google by 25%. They would surely pay you with heaps of money no matter if there is a patent involved or not.

pdonis 14y ago

As opposed to accepting Mozilla/Firefox, Apple and Google's efforts have moved the bar much further than if they just decided to use Mozilla's solution Solution to what problem? I would say that the reason browsers have continued to evolve is that all of the existing ones have always sucked; whatever problem past browsers thought they were solving, it wasn't sufficient to solve the real problems users were having with existing browsers. In short, no problem should ever have to be solved twice; but it does need to be solved once.

sophacles 14y ago

I think your second point is pretty contestable. Sure, png was a direct response to the gif/lzw debacle, but it is equally probable that someone would have said "you know, we could probably do better". For example, JSON didn't arise from the XML patents (of which there are none), it came from someone saying, "Seriously we all know this thing we're doing with XML could be better", and doing it. Same for a lot of programming languages. Same for a lot of things. Technology seems to progress by a combination of people's interest and snagging at the low-hanging fruit of "this has become unbearable". At some point, a better gif would have happened just because it hit the proper pain point.