[gatmne]

I was thinking about this recently. I think this type of consolidation starts to make sense if you think of software as mathematics. A formula gets devised, iterated upon and refined, adopted, and then finally built upon.

It makes more sense to adapt a standard formula to a given use case than it is to derive a custom formula from the ground up. I suspect the reason why its not the case for software is because of copyright and IP laws.

Likewise, I expect mathematics wouldn't have advanced as much as it has had there been IP laws enacted for mathematics. People would too limited by the licensing terms for their Leibniz™ and Euler™ formulas to be able to be able to build the next step.

[bjz_]

There are many degrees of freedom to work on when it comes to mathematics, many perspectives to look at the same problem. Some are elegant, some are ugly, others are painful to work with, and make future progress hard. Just as it is with software. We constantly need to reassess our foundations, and not get too coupled to a single perspective, lest it drive us into a corner and stifle further innovation.