RE: Way OT: Adam Smith and Software Markets

["Robert C. Leif" <rleif@rleif.com>]

The use of XML should serve to increase competition. Microsoft and its
present competitors have the very significant deficiency of having not
provided an easy way to add new functionality to their products. The
combination of providing the sources together with the use of Ada and XML,
using XML schemas, should solve this problem.
Bob Leif

-----Original Message-----
From: Preben Randhol [mailto:randhol+news@pvv.org] 
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 10:46 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Way OT: Adam Smith and Software Markets

Marin David Condic wrote:
> Just remember that "Quality" is something that is defined by the purchaser
> and doesn't necessarily line up with the technologist's view of what makes
> something "better". One might consider Microsoft Word to be an inferior,
> buggy, bloated software product, but is that what the consumer sees? Maybe
> they see "compatibility with the rest of the world" to be a big deal. Maby
> they think "low price" is more important - or "Integration with other
> Microsoft Products" is a key value. All other things being equal, they
might
> prefer one that was less bloated and more bug-free but all other things
are
> seldom equal, are they?

Or they might not prefer it but be force into using it because allmost
everybody else uses it (or feels forced to...).

> And yes, Word is superior in many ways to earlier word processors (Does
> anybody *really* want to go back to using TECO? Well, maybe *somebody*
does,
> but they are far and few between.) and that's an example of where market
> forces allowed a better product to supplant inferior products. There are
> probably things emerging that would be "better" than Word and they may
> eventually emerge on top too. 

Well I read an article once that showed that the efficiency of writing
had not improved since 1980s despite the changes in the word processors.
However, I cannot recall where I read it so this so this cannot be
submitted as evidence ;-)

However, try writing a paper with some 20 equations and figures and
tables and you'll soon see how frustrating Word is. Top it of with that
the paper has to be in Letter format (or A4 for those who use Letter)
and you'll go nuts. Word works for two page memos, but not much more IMHO.

I don't know about TECO (probably before my time), but I don't think
WP5.1 was much poorer than the Word of today. But give me LaTeX and I'll
be happy. ;-)

> Markets work - just not necessarily overnight nor according to what
> the technologist may prefer.

The market works poorly in the desktop business as there is a monopoly
situation. The competition seem to be eaten by the monopolist. However,
there seem to be evidence that things may change in the future,
hopefully. The only reason why Microsoft hasn't been able to remove
Linux etc.. as a threat is that they cannot buy it.

Preben
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