Re: RE: Portable GUI (was Re: Future with Ada)

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <mailman.1008747421.26661.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>, Robert C. Leif,
Ph.D. says...
>One of the major reasons for Microsoft's success is the technical
>incompetence of its competitors. First they were dumb enough to try to beat

Microsoft certainly likes to spread this story (check their anti-trust arguments
sometimes). But I'm not really enamored of any theory that depends on there
being some kind of mass incompetence between large amounts of diverse
organizations and individuals who have no connection to each other (according to
the theory) but coincidental ones. For one thing, it doesn't make a very good
theory, scientificly, as there are no predictions one can make from it to test
it.

For instance, lets take the alternative theory that everyone is equally
(in)compentent, but that everything's basicly a crap shoot. Whenever you talk
about gambling, in the long run the odds favor the party with the most money.
This theory would predict that if any software company were to get in a dominant
financial position, it could just outlast anyone it competes with because it
will have the resources to survive blunders that will take down the lesser
companies. This theory may not be fully correct, but at least it explains *why*
the winners and losers are who they are, and gives you something you can draw
testable conculsions from.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

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