While listening to the This Week In Google podcast I was struck once again at how similar writers and programmers are. The panelists were discussing the Android Market Place and compare and contrasting it to the Apple App Store. But the first thing I noticed was how Google is making the app market open to any and all programmers with an app to sell. It is very similar to how Amazon is letting any writer publish his or her book in the Kindle market.
Of course there was even the similar issue of how the programmer/writer with the best product rose above the noise of crappy products to get seen. Just the simple fact that anyone can put up an app or a book on these platforms and that only the really good stuff will survive, was interesting to me. Of course the Apple way is much closer to traditional publishing in that you can only get an app in their store if you are vetted by their staff.
Once again Open Source programmers and Self Published writers are turning out to be more alike than I ever imagined.