• Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    1 month ago

    The danger here is that they make “open” standards so horrendously complex and ever evolving that only the billionaire mega corporations can can realistically keep up with them.

    See the web where Google now control it completely by having such an enormous amount of code that even Microsoft couldn’t be arsed to keep up, or Office Open XML, where 100% compatibility is limited to exactly one product: The one that made it. I just downloaded the documentation for the standard. It is over 5000 fucking pages long. That was part 1 of 4.

    • Barzaria@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      I think that this is the reason that the rust programming language exists: to make learning the skill too hard for a regular person.

      • Hello Hotel@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        My favorate quote about the language is, “it feels like rust was made by people who hate uncertan behavor.” Languages with manual memory management are harder. On top of that, Rust demands you prove your memory management is ‘correct’.

    • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Another example here is the Matrix protocol, specifically designed from the ground up to be open and distributed. In reality, the only option for full-featured stable server software is the one maintained by the project itself, and there aren’t a lot of third party clients available.

      Openness itself is a good goal, but the complexity itself can pose a barrier openness.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        true, but at least they have been working on modularizing it for a few years, and making it so that even unsupported message types can be displayed to some level