RE: The tragedy of the commons

[Jeff Lowery <jlowery@scenicsoft.com>]

I don't fault the bright people who are currently running the show from
trying to find universal solutions to a wide variety of domains, I just
question their chances for success.

In every complex problem, there are simpler problems screaming to get out.
If we can address well-scoped, domain-specific problems first, we might have
a crack at a universal solution 10 years from now. XML vies with established
solutions now; there's no reason to think its successor universal solutions
won't be viable alternatives to established variant XML technologies of the
future.

As I see it, we can plan and control the split, or we can let the split
happen. But if we stubbornly refuse to recognize that we currently have
separate domains with irreconcilable (or near-irreconcilable) requirements,
then we either get solutions which are watered-down abstractions, or we get
on group feeling chaffed by the yoke of another groups 'essential'
technologies.

It's going to take leadership, and it's going to have to come from the
establishment, not from proles laboring on subsistence code farms. Else the
revolution comes... with all its attendant chaos.