Easily switching between two different software systems is a non trivial engineering problem that deeply constrains design.
This is terrible for consumers if it means software can’t be improved.
This is terrible for consumers if it means software can’t be improved.
I'm personally OK with requiring interoperability when the free market resorts to rent seeking when can't attract customers by offering compelling services.
Interoperability requirements can be easy as mandating documentation and legal permission for interaction with API and it can be up to the competitors to implement the easy switching experience.
This is a misunderstanding of the problem. Once there is an API it can’t be changed without breaking the clients.
Therefore independent progress is no longer possible. This destroys innovation.
Because that's not the case, it's just a fallacy. Close or open API, they all have legacy users and the solution to the legacy users is the same. Obviously, if the competitor fails to update it's software for the updated API they will fail to acquire new clients and that would be the competitors problem.
No. Why would you think that?
That’s what forced means.
Competitors and api consumers would be able to argue that any change they didn’t like was anticompetitive and request injunctive relief. It would be up to the courts to decide each time.
Of course there wonʼt be a mandate on exact API endpoints or data structures for every kind of service anyone could possibly create. That would be an impossible undertaking even for a bureaucracy like the EU.
Exactly!
because they are not interoperable.
If they were, it would be simple.
Do you not see the problem?
the only problem I see is the fictional one you are creating.
Interoperability is a layer, not a feature.
Just like rails, the fact that they are the same almost everywhere in the world, hasn't stopped trains from improving and changing independently.
Italian high speed trains are different from Japanese ones.
They use the same rails.
Software is the only industry where interoperability is seen as an obstacle, but it's at the same time the industry that prides itself of being the most innovative. so innovative that they can't solve interoperability?
A single person developed pipewire that replaces pulseaudio entirely without a glitch and billion dollar companies can't do the same?
I don't believe it.
Thanks for the advice.
I'll humbly begin studying again how software works.
My fault for thinking that companies that sell the promise of self driving cars and colonizing Mars could solve the problem of making it possible to interoperate with other software products.
I clearly underestimated the challenge and overestimated the abilities of their 10x employees and of their visionaries CEOs.
I wonder how is that even possible that HTTP or e-mail came to be. Must be some kind of alien technology.
HTTP and Email are extremely narrow, have had vast amounts of work put into them over time, and are still deeply flawed. They have also developed at a glacial pace.
Your examples show that money can’t magically solve hard problems, and ironically, that even the narrowest forms of interoperability are extremely hard.
HTTP is virtually running the World as it is.
I wouldn't call its scope narrow.
But probably I wasn't clear enough: we just need a way to access data and documentation.
You don't need to know what kind of web server is running when you send a request and the WEB server don't need to know what kind of client is sending the request to answer.
Interoperability is easy, if there is the will.
If there is no will, let's mandate it by law.
I don't see the problem.
Your argument is: the perfect solution is impossible so it's pointless to even try.
Which is provably false.
Even more so because software interoperability existed, before companies started to lock everything down, to push their proprietary tracking soft... ehm apps.
same reason they killed RSS
I could connect to Goggle or Facebook chat with any XMPP client back then.
WhatsApp protocol started as a a modified version of ejabberd (XMPP server).
etc.
Nobody asked for perfect.
Flawed is still better than no solution.
Human body is deeply flawed too, we don't renounce to live because we have to die anyway.
Exactly. It’s not an API - it’s a way to transfer arbitrary blocks of data. Applications that use http have to build an API on top.
That’s why it’s not even close to a valid comparison, and yet it has still become extremely complex over time.
> Flawed is still better than no solution.
This not the case. In many cases flawed solutions simply fail.
Uh?
API cannot transfer blocks of data?
Again: this is not new, it's tedious, it's bureaucratic, it can be hairy, but it's not difficult.
This seems like a deliberate and silly misunderstand on your part.
If you don’t realize that most API’s generally do more than simply transfer arbitrary blocks of data, then you have lied about your experience as a developer.
HTTP is just a transfer protocol. It’s in the name.
where did I say it?
> HTTP is just a transfer protocol
that's been hardly true since forever.
POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH etc ever heard of these verbs before?
You want innovation to be automatically compatible with competitors ? That's what Open Source is for.
If they could capture your thoughts directly from your brain and leave you not even seeing the light of the day, they would.