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All the nerds here only think about standards etc. Don't forget whatsapp is a company and it has to protect its market. Without controlling all the clients, wha

by TeeWEE 12y ago

All the nerds here only think about standards etc. Don't forget whatsapp is a company and it has to protect its market. Without controlling all the clients, whatsapp is worth a lot less.

ck425 12y ago
Why does controlling the clients make it worth more? One of the articles key points was that it shut down good 3rd party clients and replaced them with a bad 1st party client. Controlling the clients is only a good move if you use that control to make better clients.
shmerl 12y ago
By that logic any e-mail service should be incompatible with the rest, but that's clearly idiotic and no one would try arguing it. Try also imagining that your mobile carrier would tell you that by no means you are allowed to call to users of another carrier, since that would not "protect their market". Would you ever use such? When it comes to instant messaging however some lose common sense and start thinking that dark ages approach is acceptable. When communication service instead of enhancing communication tries to hinder it by intentionally gutting interoperability, one should avoid it like a plague.
- robinhood 12y ago
  You are comparing two different things. Email is a generic concept - it's not proprietary . A message sent through Whatsapp is an instance of the whatsapp application - not a standard message. Basically, if we push your analysis further, Facebook, which is a communication application, should let you send a message to your twitter account, that you could read with twitter, and reply with a comment on an Instagram picture. That'd be the same thing - I mean, they are all "messages" somehow, aren't they? See, it's - as you say - clearly idiotic as no one would open its platform that much.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    > Email is a generic concept - it's not proprietary Concepts can't be proprietary altogether. You can't own ideas. Instant messaging isn't proprietary either. > A message sent through Whatsapp is an instance of the whatsapp application - not a standard message. If you are talking about certain implementation of ideas being proprietary - that's exactly the point of my original comment. Making it intentionally incompatible to "control the market" is crooked lock-in tactic. Which is especially the case with Whatsapp which internally uses XMPP which was designed for interoperability and as IETF standard. And I brought examples with e-mail. A long time ago Compuserve and AOL e-mail services used to be incompatible on purpose. But pressure from users to end that stupidity forced them to reconsider. There is no valid reason that a lot of IM services can't interoperate to a good degree. Except for greed and backwards thinking.

by TeeWEE 12y ago

All the nerds here only think about standards etc. Don't forget whatsapp is a company and it has to protect its market. Without controlling all the clients, whatsapp is worth a lot less.

ck425 12y ago

Why does controlling the clients make it worth more? One of the articles key points was that it shut down good 3rd party clients and replaced them with a bad 1st party client. Controlling the clients is only a good move if you use that control to make better clients.

shmerl 12y ago

By that logic any e-mail service should be incompatible with the rest, but that's clearly idiotic and no one would try arguing it. Try also imagining that your mobile carrier would tell you that by no means you are allowed to call to users of another carrier, since that would not "protect their market". Would you ever use such? When it comes to instant messaging however some lose common sense and start thinking that dark ages approach is acceptable. When communication service instead of enhancing communication tries to hinder it by intentionally gutting interoperability, one should avoid it like a plague.

robinhood 12y ago
You are comparing two different things. Email is a generic concept - it's not proprietary . A message sent through Whatsapp is an instance of the whatsapp application - not a standard message. Basically, if we push your analysis further, Facebook, which is a communication application, should let you send a message to your twitter account, that you could read with twitter, and reply with a comment on an Instagram picture. That'd be the same thing - I mean, they are all "messages" somehow, aren't they? See, it's - as you say - clearly idiotic as no one would open its platform that much.
- shmerl 12y ago
  > Email is a generic concept - it's not proprietary Concepts can't be proprietary altogether. You can't own ideas. Instant messaging isn't proprietary either. > A message sent through Whatsapp is an instance of the whatsapp application - not a standard message. If you are talking about certain implementation of ideas being proprietary - that's exactly the point of my original comment. Making it intentionally incompatible to "control the market" is crooked lock-in tactic. Which is especially the case with Whatsapp which internally uses XMPP which was designed for interoperability and as IETF standard. And I brought examples with e-mail. A long time ago Compuserve and AOL e-mail services used to be incompatible on purpose. But pressure from users to end that stupidity forced them to reconsider. There is no valid reason that a lot of IM services can't interoperate to a good degree. Except for greed and backwards thinking.