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Beginning of the end for Microsoft and other proprietary efforts?
- diN0bot 17y agoi hope so. i'm looking forwards to a livelier collaborative eco-system of open-source or at least open-api modules made by smaller teams rather than h4444ge corporate efforts. i'm not even sure that the economy of scale is true, but even if it does it only seems to benefit the tip of the iceberg.
- GeneralMaximus 17y agoThe fun part is, if Linux grows then all the other open source platforms (Solaris, the BSDs etc.) also grow (open standards, open source drivers, etc).
- pierrefar 17y agoNot necessarily. The Open Source world is riddled with incompatible licenses, so it's probably not as straightforward as one would hope.
- jcl 17y agoIt's a little hard to call it the end for Microsoft and other proprietary efforts, when the lion's share of Microsoft's marketshare loss has been picked up by Apple.
- ZeroGravitas 17y agoI think a great deal of Apple's growth has been due to them being so cornered that they had to turn to open standards. One of the big draws of the iPod originally was that it played mp3s. That seems ridiculous in hindsight but Sony was pushing Atrac and Microsoft was pushing WMA. (If you ripped your CD on Windows for a while, not only would it do it in WMA format but it would add DRM which meant your music stopped working when you re-installed). I'm not saying Apple doesn't still try to pull proprietary moves when it thinks it can get away with it, but I do think "Apple=Proprietary" is some kind of zombie meme from the last century and overstates the case. As an example Apple got called out for "proprietary" headphones on the first iPhone just because they recessed it for greater structural integrity, yet even now it is a "feature" on most phones if they have a standard headphone jack.