Rock Hymas

Jeff Atwood recently discussed The Dark Side of Extensions, and advocated taking the five most useful popular extensions to Firefox and integrating them into the product as features. Before the Firefox team decides to go do that, it might be useful for them to step back and consider what they want Firefox to be: a solution or a platform.

The platform vs solution question eventually rises in any successful software project. The reason is that successful projects are used and usually by a lot of people. The more people use your software, the more people want to change it to fit their particular needs, address weak areas in the product, or adapt it for new uses. Once this pressure starts being applied, from your customers, you have a choice. You can hire extra people, work extra hard and try to take care of the most frequently requested changes as quickly as possible. Or you can do the work to make your software “extensible”, essentially to turn it into a platform. Of course, you can also do something in between.

The most obvious example of a platform in software is the operating system for a personal computer. Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, are all platforms for personal computing. Of the three Linux is probably the most pure as a platform. Mac OS X is the least pure, because Apple sees it more as one part of a larger solution that they offer to users, and so don’t give their developers the same level of support that either Microsoft or the open source community does.

Those who advocate a pure platform approach like Linux, because you can include or exclude “bloat” (i.e. features) that you never use. This was very apparent in the comments to Jeff’s post, where tons of people said, in effect, “I don’t want a bloated browser like IE or Opera - I just want it to include the things I use.” Mozilla is definitely going down the platform route with Firefox, and the users who therefore choose Firefox reflect that.

Microsoft tends to take a middle of the road approach with its software. Windows and IE both attempt to be solutions and platforms at the same time. And both had great success because they got the killer “apps”: Windows had Office and IE had all the websites that only worked in IE for years. Heck, even now my wife won’t switch to Firefox because some pages “don’t look good”, despite Firefox’s apparently better support for standards.

Apple obviously approaches the problem by trying to produce a solution, and that has been extremely successful for them in certain markets (can anyone say iPod? iPhone?). In the past they haven’t had as much success as a platform, so it will be interesting to see how the new iPhone SDK works out for both Apple and it’s developers.

Ultimately, I’m not sure that creating a platform for end-user extensions is the right way to go in the browser market. Platforms are market makers. Windows created a huge market for all types of software by creating a successful platform for personal computers. The real market that browsers enable is the market for cool web sites and services, not the market for browser extensions (how many browser extensions are profitable products?). A browser needs to focus on becoming a platform for web sites and services, and becoming an easy way to get to those for end users. Browsers are not the only user interface to the internet, but they are the primary one and can remain so only if they provide an excellent platform for creating web sites. Of course, there are huge problems in trying to do that. But if a browser can do that, in a way that gives it a competitive advantage, it will become the platform for the web and be more successful, and probably more profitable, than Windows.

Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett often talk about companies with “moats” or with some intangible asset that makes it very hard for other companies to effectively compete with them. Coca-Cola’s brand is their moat. The network effect has created an amazing moat for Microsoft around their operating system business. Google has a similar network effect moat around their advertising business. While I have almost always heard moats discussed in a business context, I was considering Munger’s “multi-disciplinary” approach recently and realized that moats apply just as well to individuals and the success that they can achieve.

An individual’s moat is their habits. After reading just a little of Munger’s writing it becomes clear that his great success in life comes from his habits of learning constantly, using mental checklists, and approaching all problems in a multi-disciplinary way. I’ve learned enough to recognize how powerful these practices can be but I haven’t really made them into habits. Most people haven’t. Of course, these aren’t the only habits that lead to success, and I’m sure Munger himself has many more. In some ways, his message for individuals is the same as Stephen Covey’s in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Although Covey discusses seven specific habits to develop, he also states up front that it is the habits we have that create success. He wouldn’t limit success to just seven habits any more than Munger would.

Of course, corporations have the equivalent of habits in their corporate culture, and some corporations have great cultures that work like moats. The moats I discussed above, however, are not primarily culture based. Likewise, individuals can have non-habit moats such as personal networks or reputation. However, I believe that to develop these we need to have the right habits. Scoble’s habits of constant blogging and networking have made him into a force to reckoned with in the technology world. Many others have developed the same habits and the same ability to influence others.

Regardless, as I try to become a better software developer in the coming months, one thing that is weighing on me is the idea that I need to be developing the habits of a professional engineer in order to create a personal moat that makes me more competitive. But I’m also looking beyond that to the habits I need to be more successful in other areas of my life - my family, church, hobbies, etc. I suppose its time to go back and read 7 Habits, if only for the reminder of how to change them.