Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Don't be a sharecropper Tim... The Corante: Open Source blog has an interesting comment regarding commercial software development: Tim Bray manages to put into very few words something I've tried to explain to a number of people in a very long-winded way. Bray points out that developers (and companies...) who work on proprietary platforms are basically sharecroppers. That is, they're basically working someone else's plot of land to scratch out a living in a very unsecure position. It's a lousy position to be in, because you're never going to make much, and if the land's owner finds something better to do with the land, you're history. A practical example of this is Watson, the product mentioned above, which did very nicely, thank you, on the Macintosh, until the owner of the land brought out Sherlock, a very nice program that did many of the same things. Another example of this would be Adobe -- which is finding itself squeezed by both Apple and Microsoft. While Apple is developing its own tools for A/V editing, Microsoft wants to capture some of the space that Adobe is trying to capture with its Acrobat tools.[Corante: Open Source] I've been thinking a lot about this of late, what with my dismal experience (not)working with Apple to integrate PuppetTime into QuickTime, and considering the numerous other developers who bet their farms on Apple technologies only to see Apple screw them over. I think there are still opportunities on the desktop, but you won't see me rely on Apple- or MS-specific technologies anymore. It does mean more work upfront, but the independent foundation will be well worth it. 9:28:50 PM    trackback []