This has to extend to business as well as consumer use. Give people the power to choose technology in all contexts. That's all we need. You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple. But interoperability legislation can only go so far to fixing things because we also need to tackle: - Regulator and institutional capture by vendor lobby…
> You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple. that's naive. the problem is that we moved away as an industry from that model for 2 specific reasons: - widely used standards take decades to change just slightly, or never (see SMS, email) - interoperability means either lowest common denominator or a huge cost to keep things interoper…
Please attack my arguments, don't make aspersions as to my disposition.
> the problem is that we moved away as an industry
Please don't try to define the narrative from a parochial viewpoint. No. we didn't. Some of us did. And those few have arguably done a great deal of damage to "the industry".
> widely used standards take decades to change just slightly, or never (see SMS, email)
It's arguable that they _should_ take a long time to adapt, because stability is also a value. That doesn't preclude the emergence of new and better standards which have a fair chance of adoption in the market for protocols. Interoperability would be a key factor in their success of course.
> interoperability means either lowest common denominator
I see no justification for this statement. There are many factors that portend lowest-common outcomes, like efficiency, reckless engineering in pursuit of fast time to market... but interoperability isn't one of them.
> or a huge cost to keep things interoperable
This is what you're really shooting at isn't it? Less profit for people who want to "move fast and break things" and get out when they're done extracting. I prefer to build lasting things and treat technology as a part of long-term culture. It's just a personality type thing.
> horrible for innovation
Advancing dichotomy between standards and innovation is simply disingenuous. The entire existence of the internet is a counterexample.
> killer for funding, both pull money away from other things.
Money.
> all for giving "jit.si" or your "home grown WebRTC solution" a reason to exist.
No. Everything else you've said is about differences of value and philosophy. Fair enough. But on this point you are missing some fundamental understanding of technology.
It is not "all for" my choice. Choice is a means not an ends. Choice is what underpins the drive for innovation, but ultimately there is telos (purpose) in technology beyond making profit. Those ends include resilience, opportunity, reliability, hybrid vigor of hetrogenous systems to name a few. Naivety is having a partial or immature understanding of a bigger picture, though I would not accuse you of that of course.
respects