Global Guerrillas: BOYD ON AL QAEDA'S GRAND STRATEGY

I'm quite intrigued by the ideas within Fourth Generation War.

Here's a good intro to John Boyd's "grand strategy", which may have some relevance to platform wars.

Global Guerrillas: BOYD ON AL QAEDA'S GRAND STRATEGY

Of course, platform wars are usually a kind of competetition where two platform vendors compete to see who can make theirs the most attractive platform for developers and customers. Whereas Boyd's strategy is aggressive, trying to deliberately cut the opponent's informational and moral connections to the wider community.

But if we see the platform war as also being a struggle for hearts and minds of developers, those physical, informational and moral connections with the wider community may have a role.

Consider the ongoing syndication wars between Winer's (and now Microsoft's) RSS and the ATOM community. A great deal of the intemperate sniping that's going on is actually an attempt by each side to try to sever the moral ties between the opponents and the wider community. Is Winer autocratic, dishonest, untrustworthy? Is Google a "politically motivated" wannabe monopolist because Blogger doesn't support RSS?

Let's keep watching the rhetoric in the platform wars from this angle. Who (particularly companies) is trying to cut who's informational and moral links? Who's trying to confuse the other with fire and motion (or FUD)?