Occasionally, when discussing disaggregation, I'll be asked if there's more to disaggregation than standards. An interesting article discusses software as a component and brings up an important point, the distinction between standards and disaggregation:
One of the things I find interesting about the difference between open source components and the traditional kind of component framework is that, of course, there isn't that notion of a well-defined standard in the open source world. There isn't one way of specifying interfaces and one way of instantiating components. Open source is much more flexible and fluid than that.
Having standards is nice in that they force everything down the same path, so you need to learn only one way of doing things. But, as you say, it can sometimes be complex. What do you think about the value of the rigidity of the standards in the interface specifications that are typically associated with components?
Certainly I cover standards in detail in the book, but it was nice to see a discussion from the perspective of someone who manages huge software projects. Standards are often nice, and they're often based on disaggregation, but they aren't a panacea and sometimes introduce more problems than they solve. After all, the whole point of most standards is that they themselves cannot be disaggregated...
Topics: · software
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