Y - When a good alternative dies
The open-source community being dynamic, popping up new alternatives all the time, doesn’t mean there automatically is a wide choice of software available. It just means a lot of ideas get worked out to a website, some sample code an maybe even a working application. Take Y-Windows for example. Y was created as a from-scratch implementation of X which is bloated, old and started to suck-and-scare more people. A mailinglist was set up, a wiki appeared, and although the idea was good and there were some very interesting discussions; things died with the main developers saying they were working really hard on some ‘very-good’ ideas which never seemed to make it to the actual CVS tree. Fortunately there are also people working on improving X instead of rewriting it, thereby avoiding major compability issues. I assume new projects don’t just need to be hyped, they need people open to new developers and ofcourse: Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.
