Erwin's StarOffice Tango

Erwin's StarOffice Tango
Erwin Tenhumberg's Insights into Open Source and Dancing
... or why Open Competition matters

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Mittwoch April 13, 2005

About open standards, reverse engineering and monopolies
Yesterday I came across this interesting article ("Linus Torvalds in bizarre attack on open source"). I think, reverse engineering is not necessary in areas where open standards are used. With open standards in place, every participant in the market place can compete on an equal level. The best implementation of an open standard will still win in the end. In a proprietary world where for example one monopoly controls everything, reverse engineering is necessary, so that other players actually get a chance to participate.

Compared to my ballroom dancing sport that would mean that a new couple or team could only compete if someone taught them how to dance. If a few teams kept the rules and the steps secret, the new couple could not participate unless it learns how to dance from just watching the others.

However, once the new couple knows how to dance and can participate it would be lame/unfair to just copy the routine of the best couple. I think once a fair competition is established, every competitor has to find its own unique niche or strategy.

Yes, OpenOffice.org had to do some reverse engineering, but it's also doing some unique things like the default XML file format, the integrated PDF export, the Flash export, the XForms support, the Java programmability, multi-platform support, etc.
( Apr 13 2005, 09:40:12 AM CEST ) Permalink

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