[loudmax]

Politicians shouldn't be in charge of defining interoperability standards. But politicians can mandate that companies be interoperable.

Regulation is hard. This doesn't mean that rules shouldn't exist.

[bhawks]

Just because they can doesn't mean they should.

Should they mandate that video game platforms be interoperable? What about mandating that every company produces apps that interoperate with windows Mac Linux and mobile.

[albertzeyer]

Difficult question indeed. And that even leaving aside the technical questions.

But wouldn't it be nice? Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, all together? Or always cross platform apps? Is there any real benefit for the user that they are not interoperable?

[bhawks]

Saying wouldn't it be nice without proposing how such a scheme would work without picking winners and losers is naive. The devil is in the details as they say.

Ubitiquious cross platform apps, sure! Just 3x your development team size - will your app still make sense to make with those costs? Oh don't worry - just replatform to a cross platform toolkit (and stop working on new features for 6-12months and retrain the entire team).

I just don't see why it's worth bringing the blunt hammer of government intervention here - let alone a reasonable path for regulation implementation.

[dingleberry420]

It'd be more likely they'd mandate Mac, Linux and Mobile to all support a common app format. Which they already kind of do, the web.