NodeBB

@smallcircles @ben Unfortunately, the top-down approach often stalls under its own inertia and never develops into anything at all.

If you try for too much interoperability too fast, the costs aren't evenly distributed: some implementors will have to make very few changes (usually the ones who had the most power and influence during the standardisation process), while others will have to tear up a lot of stuff and start over.

In the business/government/aid world, that can have ripples far beyond the IT systems, right into the way they organise their operations; in the FOSS world, it can mean abandoning popular features, losing users, and even destroying the contributor culture.

An 800 lb gorilla like Walmart can force that level.of dirigisme on its suppliers, but in the open world, we can just ignore or fork if we think someone's getting too restrictive: note how most web syndicators stuck with RSS 2.0 even after Atom came along to "fix" its "problems," for example (and Atom wasn't even that bad).

@smallcircles @ben The interesting thing is that it's not really a trade-off at all.

The right side of the diagram almost never works in practice — unless there's a dominant player who can enforce strict compliance, like Walmart for a supply chain or the U.S. government for corporate filings — so it's typically a choice between messiness or failure, not between messiness or slow progress.

#standards