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Re:Why did OpenDoc fail, and then fail 3 more times? by mschaef on Monday May 10, 2021 @02:19PM (#27109101)
At the time it happened, I'd have been sympathetic to that phrasing. In the couple decades then, I'm grown much more sanguine about it.

The notion that users are being somehow kept hostage by not being able to pick and choose their own suite of document components is almost completely contrary to the history of consolidation within this industry and others. Picking a collection of best of breed software components is asking way, way, way too much of the vast majority of users, who mainly had a specific set of goals, one of the most important of which is to get on with the rest of life. About the best that can be achieved with this sort of software architecture is add on components that fill specific gaps in existing suites (and then likely get rolled into the suites themselves).

Re:Why did OpenDoc fail, and then fail 3 more times? by lurkerasdfh8 on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @07:29PM (#27136486)
sorry, how that change our sympathy to the phrasing exactly?

The whole point of having users captive, is that you can offer the crappiest option and charge for it. And by charging for it you restrict who (and how) have access to it.

Re:Why did OpenDoc fail, and then fail 3 more times? by mschaef on Thursday May 13, 2021 @12:00PM (#27143649)
I still like what I wrote initially: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27107735

The tl;dr is that this architecture imposed costs on essentially everybody involved in software and offered benefits that were abstract at best. I didn't always see the costs, and I placed too much value on what I perceived to be the benefits.