Interoperability™

Many people who create FOSS applications swear by the Posix standards. Meet these standards, they say, and you have Interoperability™.

Well, possibly. With other Posix systems.

There are other FOSS routes to Interoperability™, however. Samba: interoperability with the entire Microsoft infrastructure! Eventually. Maybe.

And then there’s InteroperabilityExceptWhen™. Send in the Clones! This field includes OOo, which is interoperable with Microsoft Office, except when it isn’t, and the Gimp, which is interoperable with Photoshop, except it almost never is.

And the grand-daddy of them all, Wine. Which is clearly Interoperable™ with Wine. Not with much else, though.

Thing is, Interoperability™ is a good and noble aspiration. As Joel Spolsky points out, if you want people to transfer to your product, then you have to allow them a route back. This takes a huge amount of effort. You can’t just pick and choose. You can’t just “do it my way, because M$ don’t follow standards.” Standards? Who cares? Just make it seamless to the average user.

Apple can sort of get away without Interoperability™, because they have a defined market of people who are willing to be more or less locked in. Hell, Apple don’t even Interoperate™ with themselves.

The Loons might want to take a look at Microsoft, however. Microsoft take Interoperability™ very seriously. Probably 80% of their effort on every OS release is devoted to Interoperability™. And when you, as a developer, need to dig deeper, you have managed .NET Interoperability™ with unmanaged C++; you have COM Interoperability™; you have whole software suites and APIs devoted to Interoperability™.

Gnu? Gnu has ConfigureMakeMakeInstall™, aka Do It Our Way Or Else. The Linux Kernel? The Linux Kernel intentionally has the opposite of Interoperability™ — unstable ABIs.

When you have an OS that doesn’t even recognise its close relative from six months ago, you do not have Interoperability™. If you can’t even talk to your kissin’ cousin, you stand no chance of talking to the 99% of the rest of the world.