Comment 919 for bug 1

Please take a look at the following article:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212100714

where it presents causes and solutions to fixing linux. The causes can be summed up as too many choices lead to fragmentation before it leads to or along with innovation. You can't bring innovation if different software/components won't work with each other in the first place. Although open source sounds much better than closed source philosophically, it's implementation to provide user-friendly computer experience is not achieved--IMO, mainly due fragmentation of software. The greatest advantage of open-source philosophy ie. to allow freedom of choice to design as per a particular individual or a group's preference and inspiring innovation, is also it's greatest weakness because it leads to fragmentation at many levels which eventually leads to sub-par user experience. Obviously, in theory, by allowing anyone to contribute in bringing change to the linux software universe, it should bring faster innovation than in a closed-source enviroment where an authority holds power over what changes are allowed. However, open source software (OSS) fails because the changes and innovation are not co-ordinated <-- a direct result of a lack of supreme authority. very good example that I know of is the Audio API -- alsa, pulse, etc. Very annoying. In fact, such fragmentation hinders innovation. Consider the fact that there isn't an audio editor that works under ubuntu 8.04 that supports pulse. Compare that to a universe of audio editors available for windows platform! Software developers working with windows are fully aware and clear about specifications for design because there's only one specification--windows. That is much easier than fitting to not only many but also ever-changing specifications found in linux universe!

That is the fallacy of choice. Due to this fallacy, the potential for open source innovation is not realized and leads to a chaotic user experience.

What I would like to know is the steps taken to overcome this fallacy. Please list them here. Is FOSS one of them? Open "standards"?