this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
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Frankly I have to mention one thing - while BG was in MS, the Windows world was kinda fine. He left before even Windows 7. He left after Vista, and Vista wasn't very good, but what's important - MS didn't only do evil.
I mean, yeah, not "fine" fine, but when you are saying "and then stagnated for 20 years", Bill wasn't in MS for most of those 20 years.
I agree that platform dynamics suck, but I also very well remember from my childhood that I wanted platforms. Everyone wanted platforms. Everyone wanted platforms like ICQ, not too opinionated and de-facto interoperable, or like Geocities, but people wanted platforms.
It was just plainly unavoidable. Everyone wanted webpages to be dynamic applications and everyone wanted platforms.
Yes, both are traps of evolution.
Say, dynamic pages I wanted would be more like embedded content in its own square, as it was with Flash. Just instead of Netscape plugin API and one proprietary environment it could involve a virtual machine for running cross-platform bytecode, or even just PostScript. Java applets were that idea, sort of (no sandboxing), as always Sun solved the hard problem perfectly, but forgot to invent a way for adoption. Maybe it could be allowed access to cut buffers and even the rest of the page. But that would be requested. This would prevent the web turning into something only Chrome can support.
Say, platforms I wanted would be more like standardized unified resources pooled. Storage resources and computing resources and notification servers and indexation servers for search, possibly partitioned to accommodate the sheer amount of data. Maybe similar to Usenet and NOSTR. With user application being the endpoint to mix those into a "social network" or some other platform. Universal application-agnostic servers, specific user applications.
But this is all in hindsight.