[coyotos-dev] Hi + some stuff I found researching

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Fri, 2006-07-14 at 10:31 -0400, Wes Kussmaul wrote:
> Mobility of capital is the culprit.

Actually, this is not correct. The real culprit is something called
"lock in".

Given a choice between an existing imperfect solution that mostly works,
and a better solution that won't be available for another year,
customers adopt the imperfect solution. They then create content. This
content makes it increasingly difficult to switch unless the content
format is open. This is why MS has worked so hard over the years to
regularly alter the file formats of the Office suite of software.

Because of this, an early buggy product can establish a de facto
monopoly that cannot later be unseated.

There exist some markets where this does not yet hold, but it is a
reasonably accurate description of the general-purpose market.

Crap in a hurry really does win in the market. There is always a race
between eliminating bugs and releasing too late to dominate a market.


shap