Personalize

Text Size

Layout

Navigation Position

Willie Tilton

Check out my l337 LCD Tan!

<< Fixing ASP.NET Configuration | Home | What's so wrong with unsportsmanlike conduct? >>

Duplication of existing work

Something that hasn't really bothered me but sure does get me thinking "why" is when people duplicate other people's efforts. I'm not sure if it's ego, or they maybe just didn't bother to look if it had already done, or maybe just maybe they wanted to just do it themselves. Shoot maybe it wasn't done exactly the way they wanted it so they started from scratch.

I see this a lot in the open source area. I think this is the biggest reason why Linux can't compete with Windows, and why other open source projects don't get the support they need (The main ones that come to mind are the Ajax ASP.NET OSP out there: Magic AJAX, Ajax.NET, MSAjax, etc).

Now my websites aren't open source (well actually I did open source my event website), but people have been and continue to recreate things that I've already created. I keep wondering why? The first thing that pops in my head is that my "version" wasn't good enough. Maybe the interface sucked, and it looked like shit. If that was the case then, why didn't they contact me and maybe work with me to make it better? Shoot, that'd be great. I'd give them all the credit, and plus the stuff would work that much better. I'm not a mean dude, I'm not selfish, and I love to share code and discuss how I can make myself a better programmer.

Instead no one ever contacts me, and they keep creating websites that...frankly cause we're in such a small sport, don't do anything and as the years roll by they disappear. MNP has been around now over a decade. It ain't going anywhere, but it is getting bigger. I suppose one person did contact us, Lawler Sports. They believed in us enough, and we came through we added a storefront to MNP in a single day. Can you believe that in MNP's entire 10 year existance that only one other store came to us with some ideas to promote us and them, but they never followed through? I can tell you Lawler Sports is pretty happy they didn't.

Thursday, March 01, 2007 1:24 PM

Your Comments.

# re: Duplication of existing work
Everyone wants their own websites hon. . . its the "I can do it bigger and better" theory. In the case that your using though, I dont think that even they had that intention. They wanted something a little more "state" specific...and it goes along with their own website. You've already said you dont want to develop for MNP anymore and so why would you think that people would contact us for our stuff when the stuff we have is broken, has been broken for some time and users have contacted us for sometime to get it fixed. you wanna be big, gotta act big...I know. . we dont get paid for anything on this site, but....have it or not...

Left by Jackie at 3/1/2007 3:49 PM
# re: Duplication of existing work
Oh, and we've been accused of reinventing the wheel as well....ranking system??

Left by Jackie at 3/1/2007 3:50 PM
# re: Duplication of existing work
I actually created a rating system. Totally different and probably one of a kind because it uses Willie math. Plus it went into our fantasy racquetball system which is another thing that others have tried unsucessfully to duplicate. We're in our 3rd year running that. So there. Woot me.

Left by Me at 3/1/2007 4:02 PM
# re: Duplication of existing work
I'd be totally into someone helping to fix certain aspects of the site or build something new. What I'm trying to say is, if you have a good idea, how about pitch it to us so that maybe we could work together? Obviously, going and making something bigger and better hasn't worked for...10...20...30 other sites now?

Left by Me at 3/1/2007 4:04 PM
# re: Duplication of existing work
Lets just sell MNP to the highest bidder but for no less than 1M :)

Left by Jackie at 3/1/2007 4:17 PM
# re: Duplication of existing work
I think the biggest thing is creative control, power, and decision making. Face it, if you have all that, somebody else does not. Why should they turn it all over to you if they want some for themselves, and it takes a lot of cooperation to achieve a happy balance with you. Small business owners are busy, they want to move at the speed of sound, not bureaucracy. That is why they duplicate. They do not want to get bogged down by having to cooperate with you or anybody else. If you want more people to work with you, you have to somehow propose to them that they will have some share and some say in how things will go, and will not have to jump through hoops for creative control. If they wanted to be bossed around they wouldn't be small business owners.

Left by Kathy at 3/2/2007 5:19 PM
# re: Duplication of existing work
If someone wanted to help they would have total freedom to do what they wanted, plus they'd have a partner. Most small business owners I know in fact know that they can't do it all and so they make strategic partnerships. I know very little successful businesses that have done everything themselves.

The thing is though, these personal websites aren't businesses. There's not real money to be made anywhere, and as far as I can tell people are doing it for free. What exactly to you think they are gaining by going and doing it alone?

I say if you're going to do the work and don't expect anything from it, you'd at least want other people to benefit from your efforts.

Left by Me at 3/3/2007 5:12 PM
# re: Duplication of existing work
I'm just telling you what I see. If I want to do something, I don't want to have to get permission from you or anybody else to do it. I think the idea of collaboration is great, but in reality it's complicated and tedious and political. But good luck. I agree, it would be better to put resources together and try and be strong and do things well, versus scatter resources and compete for negligible interest because the population is so tiny. But hey, that's just me. I've tried working with others before, and just don't seem to have the patience.

Left by Kathy at 3/3/2007 7:26 PM
# re: Duplication of existing work
If you get a chance you should try working on a Open Source project. I think you're in software in some capacity. It's there that I've picked up this mentality. Anyone can grab your software and make millions of dollars. And that's sort of the point. You're working with other individuals and making a product for the betterment of everyone. You learn a lot, and you yourself also have a say in how things progress.

This also relates to those projects. A lot of times there's a fork which goes in a slightly different direction, and someone gets more control. When that happens though, the project as a whole (IMHO) goes down the drain. Instead of working on a main effort you have two groups that create less code than they could together.

I think this is precisely why Linux hasn't taken off. If Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora, and Slackware were somehow merged: you'd have a product that could rival Microsoft's new Vista OS. The good news on that front is that Ubuntu is really leading the pack and doing good things.

Left by Me at 3/5/2007 12:37 PM
# re: Duplication of existing work
yea, well. How come you never added onto the wiki version of how to play? Other priorities, interests, etc? People are like that. They want to give it a go for themselves, see if they can be that one breakthrough on that one thing they think is really important, and they want to do it this very particular way. Even on your site, you set up the wiki, it had all kinds of potential to be marketed and used to draw a different group to your site, but it was not a priority of yours. Your personal priorities are the ones that you will work on, and that you will want to see handled just so, to achieve what you personally think is possible. And we all want to do it differently, and it's difficult to compromise. I think when you are discussing software development you are fortunate to be dealing in a more cooly logical terrain, and people are more reachable for logical discourse and discussion of compromise. Some other areas, people are less likely to be capable of highly reasonable dicussion of direction and priorities. That has been my experience with people, anyway.

Left by Kathy at 3/5/2007 5:33 PM

Your Reply.

Comment Form.

Fields denoted with a "*" are required.

*Your name:

*Subject:

You may also like to leave your email or website.

*Your message:

Please add 5 and 3 and type the answer here: