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17
adante
3y

Clients keep asking if our software will support XYZ format.

XYZ format is a proprietary format that we are not the proprietors of. Unfortunately, it has become something of a de-facto standard in our industry.

It is not practical to support the format because being able to figure it out is difficult, time consuming and not even a certainty. In fact while we have historically done so for previous versions, it has been upgraded several times so this becomes something of an arms race for us (whether intentional or not).

Responses from clients when we try to explain this vary, but a not insignificant number of them intimate that this is a failing or fault on our part.

It is pretty annoying, and considering the damage in perception it can do, is a pretty interesting and subtle form of economic moat I had not previously considered.

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  • 10
    3y
    That strategy is called "fire and motion", and one prominent example is Microsoft.

    Joel Spolsky (one of the Stackoverflow founders) had a nice blog posting on that one: https://inc.com/magazine/20080401/...
  • 1
    3y
    Proprietary standards are anticompetitive and directly harmful to economic growth.
  • 0
    3y
    Bunch of commies trying to destroy incentive to do sth good but keep the secrets, in this post.
  • 0
    3y
    @aviophile The incentive behind standards is interoperability and not direct profit. Market regulation isn't immediately bad you sad clueless ancap.
  • 0
    3y
    @homo-lorens you don’t get to choose what inventors/makers should assume as incentive. So far profit proved to be great incentive, interoperability and world peace isn’t.

    I am not even sure you understand what incentive mean.
  • 2
    3y
    @aviophile Interoperability and solid foundations are enough of a motivation for companies to sustain a whole OS called Linux and a wide variety of open standards the greatest example of which is the internet.
  • 1
    3y
    @Fast-Nop thanks for that article. Very informative and an interesting way to frame it. It has made me better understand why large companies are incentivized to build all this nonsensical enterprise crap around their applications!

    @aviophile I'm not overtly against proprietary standards per se, just noting here what I perceive as a downside to them. I think it's possible to do that without being a incentive hating communist
  • 0
    3y
    @homo-lorens you can’t force incentives is my point. I think you are missing the point.
  • 0
    3y
    @aviophile I might be missing your point, but interoperability _is_ the incentive IMO. Proprietary standards are proprietary because this way the investors can squeeze even more cash out of it, not because they wouldn't be beneficial by themselves.
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