Xref: utzoo comp.misc:6523 comp.os.misc:979 comp.arch:10573
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!watmath!watmsg!sccowan
From: sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu (S. Crispin Cowan)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.os.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: TRON (message from the project leader)
Keywords: TRON, standards, operating systems, distributed systems
Message-ID: <27595@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 10 Jul 89 15:19:00 GMT
References: <389@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu> <6340@pdn.paradyne.com> <2296@trantor.harris-atd.com>
Sender: daemon@watmath.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu (S. Crispin Cowan)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 44

In article <2296@trantor.harris-atd.com> chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes:
>In article <6340@pdn.paradyne.com> alan@oz.paradyne.com (Alan Lovejoy) writes:
>>TRON's technical merits
>>(or lack thereof) will simply be irrelevant.  The first economically-viable
>>infrastructure will always swamp any and all competition.
>     This is not always true.  Witness Edison and his promotion of DC power,
>which was supplanted by Tesla's AC system, or CBS's attempt to standardize
>on spinning wheel color television, or Sony Betamax videotape systems, or even
>Ford's planetary-gear transmission used in cars from the 1920s.  While all of
>these systems were in place first as a "standard" and showed great promise,
>they were all replaced by later, better technology.  Being first is not always
>a guarantee of success.

Better is not necessarily a guarantee of success, either.  Betamax
came first, and is definately _better_ (higher resolution), but VHS
was cheaper, which lead to wider proliferation of machines, which lead
to more software (movies), <goto wider proliferation>.  Sony's
marketing people failed to grasp this, as they headed upscale at just
the wrong time.  This same effect explains MESS-DOS.

Markets that require support are feedback loops, and thus are
meta-stable.  Whenever any standard starts to get a lead, it will feed
back on itself, and only very large effects can change the course of
the market place after that.  The important element of success is to
convince a large chunk of the market that you're ahead, _before_
anyone really is.


>Chuck Musciano				ARPA  : chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com
>Harris Corporation 			Usenet: ...!uunet!x102a!trantor!chuck
>PO Box 37, MS 3A/1912			AT&T  : (407) 727-6131
>Melbourne, FL 32902			FAX   : (407) 727-{5118,5227,4004}
>
>Oh yeah, laugh now!  But when the millions start pouring in, I'll be the one
>at Burger King, sucking down Whoppers at my own private table! --Al Bundy
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