Worse is Better Philosophy
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Intro
Something that just works, is bare bones, is better for wide adoption than a polished product that takes long to get to market. Put in another way, User Interface comes after Functionality. Aka the New Jersey Approach.
The property that makes for Worse-is-Better is modularity - easy improvability and adaptability. This is also known as Growable-is-Better.
OSE Case
In the OSE case, since we publish early and often, and make in-progress work accessible for the reason of unleashed collaboration and cultural creation - we de facto operate on the Growable-is-Better version of worse-is-better. We avoid the worse-is-better stage, because our initial design is designed with growability, according to OSE Specifications, in particular, OSE Spec 2.
Notable Examples
- Note that Linux was explicitly built on the worse is better concept when it comes to its monolithic kernel design - a known bad design that works better in practice. Stallman proposed a modular kernel - and 3 decades later - product hasn't shipped yet.
OSE Case
- The OSE Filter includes worse is better. In the OSE case, growable-is-better is achieved by modular design. For example, Incremental Housing is an example of worse-is-better.