this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Competition often does not drive innovation in the software world, quite the opposite, free open source software allows collaboration between many people to better innovate than competition ever could, especially in this particular space.
@communist yeah open source brings people together to make it better. But better than what? Than the competitions! People would be happy with version 0.5 or something, but constant new technology changes in the industry push to make new and better tools for the open source world no??
No... it can just be better, it doesn't have to be better than the competition, this is a bizarre assumption you're making here. We're talking about a website where you post small snippets of text, there isn't really much innovation to be done here, and even if there were, open standards that people co-operate on will see faster progress than a bunch of people trying to make the exact same thing separately.
You seem to believe that it's impossible to just improve and innovate without competition, but that's simply not the case.
@communist I don’t think it’s impossible, and I personally strive with the software I create to do exactly that and to join open source communities. Just what you are saying is only true if it genuinely was better. And it isn’t, it is great at something things and shit at others. And although it’s still improving it is behind others with many aspects that are getting talked about on the open forums and in the developer networks simply because of a little something called competition.
@communist I believe it’s possible. But not here yet. And the fact that you aren’t even open to see that there will be a need for improvement over time. And I see a lot more people vocally defending it to the end without seeing any of the arguments - and especially from a code base perspective trust me there’s things that will get left behind until it’s too late unless there are others pushing boundaries
There may be a need for improvement overtime... but that has nothing to do with if competition is helpful.
This is free open source software, it's better to have many people working together on one project than a bunch of projects being worked on separately, for reasons I think are obvious.
There isn't a race to be the king of the fediverse, competition does nothing but make people work separately on something that should be worked on cooperatively, it accomplishes nothing but slowing down development. If we used competition, when a new feature was implemented, now instead of it being implemented for everyone, it'll be implemented in one particular codebase, and if other people want to implement it, there will be a massive duplication of effort.
What does competition in this space actually do for the community? As far as I see it, absolutely nothing at all, except duplicating effort.
@communist okay I can see where you’re coming from - I just understood to start that you think it would thrive better without any other companies, and honestly the people on those platforms doing what they are doing wouldn’t come as benefit to a community like this nor would it get in the way if they continue. And the features set to come over the years are something that by…having let’s call them, colleagues in the industry, working on different aspects that may become of benefit
These aren't companies, these are projects, lemmy/mastodon are co-operatively worked on and can be worked on by any number of companies.
I don't want a corpo internet, that's kind of the point of federation.