OBS isn’t just a platform, it’s an open source project anyone can use. That is exactly what you’re talking about - it’s not a “competitive” tool, it’s a collaborative tool.
But it sounds like you’d rather someone create a competing set of tools to do something that’s already possible, rather than see what can be done to get other distributions and projects to leverage something that’s designed for exactly what you’re proposing.
Not impossible at all. There is f.e. a lot of cooperation with the Fedora people a.o., like on kiwi, moderation tools.
To have real cooperation the distributions have to agree to cooperate, regardless of what tools they choose.
When governments (as an example) want to have a tool implemented they don’t view the commercial market actors (such as google, microsoft and apple) as being splintered, even though they are. …but when they look at linux distributions they see nothing but a forest of splinters.
A serious collaboration between at least three distributions could change that situation.
Well, maybe you can help facilitate that collaboration, then, rather than saying “we need to build something new completely from scratch”. As Knurpht notes, there is some collaboration that does take place - I know a couple of the people myself who bridge not just the openSUSE distrubutions (and other projects under the openSUSE umbrella) and Fedora, for example. That collaboration does take place.
Heck, just look at how the LKML runs - there is a lot of cross-distribution collaboration that takes place at the kernel level. Similar collaboration takes place on the DE level as well.
There is a lot of collaboration that takes place - that is part of why things work as well as they do.
But having ideas that compete is also healthy - there are always better ways to do things, and experimentation and trying different things help make Linux distributions stronger. If everyone thinks about it the same way, then there’s no differentiation and no opportunity for someone to say “ah, here’s something that maybe works better” and to try it out.
Linux distributions aren’t a monoculture.
We’re competing with Fedora?
Since when?
There is collaboration taking place. …but to people outside the linux realm it all looks like splinters, and is regrettably treated as such.
Competition isn’t always as healthy as you would like, but it is the current paradigm. …and it is that paradigm that might have to be rebuilt or even replaced. The sheer number of distributions shows that there are alternate views and implementations but also that there isn’t enough collaboration going on, imho.
The forum software already suggests that I’ve posted a bit too much so I’m stepping back into the shadows. Thank you for taking time.
That’s a perception issue. Maybe you can help combat it.
Well, that’s certainly a valid opinion to hold. I don’t agree that having a myriad of different options means there isn’t enough collaboration - both things can exist together. But to see what works best, it’s best to have people trying things out, and that means choices. That’s the entire underpinning of the open source movement as I’ve seen it.
Otherwise, we’re making Windows or MacOS, where there’s one decider calling the shots about what is included and what isn’t. I don’t think we really want that (I certainly don’t).
I can’t even get you to understand what I’m suggesting…
The ratio between the number of alternatives and the number of collaborations is an indicator to where effort is being made, imho.
Having alternatives is often a good thing and too much of a good thing might even be fantastic. But working together could also yield worthy results without completely nuking everything else.
Is it really that hard to see that there are viable alternatives to competing about everything?
I see what you’re saying. I don’t agree with the conclusions is all, partly because you’re asserting that there is no (or little) collaboration, and that’s simply not the case.
But describing a problem is easy. Fixing it is much harder. If you see a problem, take some steps to address it. 
I’m not a fan of “don’t come to (me) with problems, come to (me) with solutions”, because a world like that ends up with lots of issues that nobody talks about because nobody has any ideas how to solve them. So talking about them is good, but ultimately, someone does have to step up and actually do something, or it’s all talk. The best approach IMO is to “talk and do” - get a group together to discuss and actually make a plan.
Otherwise, it’s all bikeshedding [1].
Definition: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding ↩︎
I was mentioned in the thread, had a look and was foolish enough to comment. So I’m going back to planning for my electric bakfiets and let all of you decide what your bikeshed should look like.