Ray and Tim on platforms
A couple technology veterans are spreading memes about platforms.
Daniel Steinberg summarizes some key points of Tim O'Reilly's keynote at the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference:
O'Reilly's final lesson was one also learned from Microsoft, "a platform beats an application every time. AppleScript matters because you get a virtuous circle of hacker innovation." As you develop applications, think about what it means to be a platform. Create hooks so that other people can write to it. Think about extensibility and interoperability when you create an application. He advised developers to think of their applications as "network and open applications. Play well with others and have fun."[Why Unix Matters to Mac OS X]
And Ray Ozzie has lots to say about Software Platform Dynamics.