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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-18T21:32:19+00:00

I work on developer tools for a particular product. There is a competing set

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I work on developer tools for a particular product. There is a competing set of tools for the same product produced by a different company. The user-base is split roughly 50-50 between us.

Recently, the other company has introduced scripting to make their own tools extensible by end-users. This is a feature that we have had planned for our tools for a while, but it is only now that we are able to start implementing it.

My question is: should we try as much as possible to collaborate with the developers of competing product so that end-user scripts can be shared between users on the different products? We would obviously require different implementations, but share the same syntax. This would obviously be better for the community as a whole since there would be more interoperability.

The downside of collaborating like this is that the competing product’s scripting language is slightly tailored towards their own implementation. We would have to jump through a few hoops to create an implementation for their scripts on our platform. Or, we would have to somehow convince our competitor to modify their scripts so that they are platform agnostic.

So, to rephrase my question: should we try to collaborate, thus making our community happier, or should we produce a competing scripting language that is more appropriate for our platform?

I realize that this is a very general question with no single right or wrong answer. What I am looking for is a good explanation of the pros and cons of each approach.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would write something that is specifically tailored towards my own system (don’t compromise your technical quality) and then release and fully support a compatibility layer that allows my competitors scripts to run on my system (make it easy for users to migrate).

    I’d stay away from doing things that will try to lock people in and cripple them if they move. These tactics worked once upon a time but in this day and age don’t really cut it any more. I’d even go so far as to actually (unofficially on fora etc.) help people who are having trouble porting scripts running on my system to my competitors.

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