> I haven’t forgotten the past. A single, crappy web browser coming to dominate the market would be just as terrible today as it was in the dark days of IE6. But WebKit is not a browser. Like Linux, it’s an enabling technology. Like Linux, it’s free, open-source, and therefore beyond the control of any single entity.
This seems very arbitrary. So WebKit isn't a "browser". Is the author saying that a monoculture at another level is ok, but the "browser" level is somehow special and we want to keep diversity there? No, I think we need diversity at all levels.
Speaking of Linux which is the main example in the article - yes, if Linux were to become completely dominant then that would be a bad thing, even if the author calls it an "enabling technology" and is somehow ok with a monoculture there. I am a huge Linux supporter - I am running on Linux right now, my desktop has been linux for many many years now, and I encourage people to switch to it and abandon proprietary OSes like Windows and OS X - but we still don't want Linux to dominate the OS kernel space.
Thankfully Linux is not doing that. It might dominate the open source kernel space, but there is still Windows Server and OS X Server. And applications written portably can often run on all of those.
Linux is a great kernel, but it has downsides like any software. If everything ran linux, it would be very very hard to invent something better than linux and get adoption for that new thing. The same is true of WebKit.
This seems very arbitrary. So WebKit isn't a "browser". Is the author saying that a monoculture at another level is ok, but the "browser" level is somehow special and we want to keep diversity there? No, I think we need diversity at all levels.
Speaking of Linux which is the main example in the article - yes, if Linux were to become completely dominant then that would be a bad thing, even if the author calls it an "enabling technology" and is somehow ok with a monoculture there. I am a huge Linux supporter - I am running on Linux right now, my desktop has been linux for many many years now, and I encourage people to switch to it and abandon proprietary OSes like Windows and OS X - but we still don't want Linux to dominate the OS kernel space.
Thankfully Linux is not doing that. It might dominate the open source kernel space, but there is still Windows Server and OS X Server. And applications written portably can often run on all of those.
Linux is a great kernel, but it has downsides like any software. If everything ran linux, it would be very very hard to invent something better than linux and get adoption for that new thing. The same is true of WebKit.