this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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What the actual fuck?
I gave several concrete examples whose usage was originally seen as unassailable, and is now easily measured as essentially zero.
Of the examples I listed, only Shockwave still has any publicly recorded examples of actual continued use, because there's a virtual museum dedicated to preserving it's memory.
That's a fine definition of a failed technology.
You're out of your element, Donny.
Edit: Your other points are essentially that those technologies aren't at their dominant phase yet. I can agree about that.
If you still need convincing (your clearly do) about open standards, read the history of licensed screwdrivers. Closed standards either die off, or become open ones. There are no exceptions.
Windows and iOS are both notable because, in my expert opinion, both have already missed their window of time when they could have become successful open standards.
Their respective owners actually realize that, as well. IBM Mainframe also missed that window, and there's history available to read. We are now seeing the same business patterns (as IBM Mainframe) with Windows and iOS.
Incidentally, IBM Mainframe actually doesn't qualify for my failed technology list, because it's still holding on. Windows probably has similar staying power to IBM Mainframe (hanging on in zombie death for decades). iOS isn't lucky enough to live on huge expensive machines that are hard to move, though. It's not going to be as lucky.
Sorry. Movie quote. The Big Labowski. Check it out. It's fun. For context, the guy that says that line is a blowhard, not to be taken too seriously. (Like me!)
I understand network effects. All of my examples had large network effects supporting them, in their time.
Seriously. Open standards win. It takes flipping forever sometimes. But they do. Check into the screwdriver thing. It's a cool read. Or for something more recent, the histories of open and closed web browsers. I think you'll find it encouraging.
That remains to be seen. I'll gladly accept XMPP as a point in the "against" column, as it has a long way to go, if it succeeds.
Google succeeded handily at their last round of embrace, extend, extinguish, against XMPP, by dropping support from Google Chat.
It's worth noting that the question isn't really whether XMPP replaces WhatsApp, it's whether it can unseat SMS.
SMS is seriously entrenched. I don't know it's state of openess. My understanding is it's mostly run/owned by a few large proprietary players.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS
Again, I'm happy to concede that XMPP looks doomed today, like RSS did a couple decades ago.
RSS certainly hasn't won, yet. But RSS is doing fine, behind the scenes. Most of the RSS the average person interacts with doesn't look, to them, like RSS. There's a lot of RSS still in wide use, today. Competing solutions are currently enshitifying (Google Search, Reddit, Facebook, Xitter), while RSS is still free and still just works.
That's not an automatic win for RSS, until you consider that RSS has already outlived WebCrawler, Digg, MySpace and GeoCities, among others.
I'm calling it early in favor of RSS.
We've agreed that I am prone to do so, though.
Yes. Linux won. The vast majority of computation today runs on Linux.
Windows used to hold a serious percentage of web hosting. My best guess is it was around half. The current percentage is unknown, but generous estimates put it at 3%, at most. For some context, the Azure cloud (Microsoft's web hosting that Office 365 runs on) is known to mostly run on Linux.
But to address the other part of your question:
Something mostly proprietary that costs money and is called Windows with be with us for a long time.
But the Windows kernel is counting it's final days now, while most people haven't noticed.
The Windows kernel is cool, but it's a pure cost center and no longer offers anything that Linux doesn't.
Game developers noticed, this year. I personally, held onto Windows desktop for decades, solely for gaming. I suspect the shift this year will turn out to be a key moment in the spin down of the Windows kernel.
A desktop OS has a ton of moving pieces. We're currently seeing the natural trend for those pieces to take advantage of existing open solutions.
I predict that we will see more and more of that, until the switching cost reaches the current low cost of switching web browsers.
We have established that. It doesn't mean I'm wrong.
That's what my other examples are evidence for. I'm extrapolating a trend I've seen many times before. I could easily be wrong.
I'm not stressing over it though, because I'm happy being a delusional old person.
Yes. And it supports my point. Here's the source code to Chrome: https://github.com/chromium/chromium
Here's the license: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/main/LICENSE
And here's the source code to Safari: https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit
There's an advertising campaign by the current big players that everyone may as well accept their bullshit, because everyone else does.
I'm telling you, from experience, that putting up with that (current) bullshit is temporary.
They'll innovative new bullshit, of course. That's how the pattern goes.
That's the perception I'm trying to counter with the web technology examples I gave above.
I was there building the web, on proprietary products, and I believed that, myself.
I'm delighted to report that I was wrong.
It took decades, but the far less visible corner of the web running on open technologies is now the only portion we currently still have.
With a big delightful exception for Shockwave Flash, and the folks valiantly keeping it alive to preserve it's part in gaming history.