(2002-09-04) a

Joel Spolsky on the differences between a Platform and an Application. Picking on Groove (and Apple, and Net Ware, and IBM's PS/2) again, which I agree with. One of the biggest themes in software industry failures is a platform vendor that didn't understand that they were a platform vendor, so they alienated their key consituency: the developers. Now there's a response from Ray Ozzie. Healthy platform businesses are optimized mixtures of platform margins, layered application margins, and layered professional services margins, along with a very very healthy ecosystem doing the same. Companies like IBM are masters at this - as Doc says, playing the platform business like a chess board.

And Dave McCusker is interested in cloning/emulating HyperCard. He'd even like to get paid to do so. I wonder what such a business would look like (e.g. pricing model vs Groove)?

And what are the implications for UserCreations' Spring Desktop?