[ih] "how better protocols could solve those problems better"

[Miles Fidelman]

On 10/1/20 11:31 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:

> On 10/1/2020 6:51 AM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>> But we could start by actually fixing things like calendaring - where 
>> the protocols exist, but nobody seems to implement them well.
>
>
> This isn't a technical or standards issue.
>
> There's no obvious information that the existing specifications are 
> deficient.
>
> Ditto for instant messaging.
>
> And yet in both cases, we have a large number of operator-specific, 
> stove-piped services.
>
> The issue, here, is lack of coherent, strong market forces towards a 
> single, common capability.
>
> Operators have the strong incentive of user capture to motivate them 
> to stovepipe.  They only relinquish that control when they are forced 
> to.  By the market. (Or maybe by regulation, but good luck with that; 
> it didn't work very well for OSI.)
>
> Absent that market pressure -- users, customers, whomever -- no amount 
> or quality of specification work matters.
>
Agree completely.

Ahh for the days when the Internet was about resource sharing, and the 
research community drove both connectivity & interoperability?

As opposed to the return of walled gardens, driven by commercial pressures.

Definitely a matter of technoeconomics & technopolitics at play.

It does seem kind of bizarre that IBM & Microsoft are now the biggest 
supporters of interoperability (and to a degree, open source) - while 
Apple & Google have become engines of evil (or at least Babel).

Miles



-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown