Emulating proprietary software - should we do it?  Emulating
proprietary software - should we do it?  Fri, 2007-04-27 22:23
-- admin  In the development of free software, should we allow
ourselves to emulate proprietary software or should we strive to
be better and unique? Is it bad that a lot of our software does
emulate pre-existing proprietary software? Do we look like we
are uncreative? Does it matter? Or is a good thing to emulate
proprietary software so that there are free software
alternatives and so that people have a choice? How do you feel
about this issue? To emulate or not to emulate... that is the
question.  Terry Hancock's picture  On the one hand, emulating
the creations of the proprietary world puts you in a constant
position of "chasing taillights", so it's not a good general
strategy.  On the other hand, there are some cases where a
particular application is so widely appreciated that it is worth
it to accomodate the market.  Of course, the prescriptive
("should") approach to this topic sugg