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> Tatu Saloranta wrote:
>> So while here, too, I
>> think it would be interesting to see some prices, I do
>> not see lack of such prices as a block that prevents
>> progress. But if such prices come available, great;
>> the more approaches the merrier!
Oh, of course lack of a prize does not prevent all progress. You are
complete right.
But the kind of progress I am talking about is progress in areas that suit
people running large, high-volume, near-congestion sites. Banks, and so
on. It would be unreasonable to expect that individual open-source hackers
will care much to solve the problems of large commercial corporations, in
significant numbers. Consequently, for large corporations and government
organizations to get the maximum benefit from open source they need to
offer incentives as part of their software strategy. (The slowness in
improvements in XML parser speed is an example of what I see as a more
general issue.)
For example, think of the accumulated savings and benefits to government
if, say, XML processing could be made 50% faster accross the board (by
every mechanism including better APIs and any other hobby horse). Fewer or
slower servers, less congestion, faster response and so on. But where is
the institutional mechanism for governments to promote this? Michael Kay
is quite right that institutions are on side with standards, which is
good, but very often these same standards are designed for completeness
not efficiency it seems to me. A standard is based on agreement, and
agreement is based on some level of compromise. So we should not look to
standards for efficiency: instead institutions or even whole-of-government
initiatives need to adopt strategies such as prizes and ex gratia
payments.
Cheers
Rick Jelliffe
Cheers
Rick
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