I think that IBM long ago concluded that it could not do everything,
and thus that the existence of other centers of development, the ISVs,
was and is in its best interests.
The problem with the separate, individual consideration of the
business cases for extension A, extension B, extension C, . . . is
that there may be, often are important synergies among them. Their
one-at-a-time evaluation is simplistic. De minimis is doubtless a
good doctrine for appelate courts; in the IT industry it is a recipe
for obsolescence and with it progressive irrelevance.
Worse, economic significance is only easy to evaluate in retrospect.
(I am old enough to remember when there was vigorous argument within
IBM about the merits, if any, of relational data base managers like
DB2.)
Quotations are apparently expected from me, and I will provide one.
No man can have in his mind a conception of the future, for the future
is not yet. But of our conceptions of the past, we make a future.
--Thomas Hobbes
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
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