The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots

"People should always know better. ... I mean people don't get smarter about things as basic as greed and you can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is, and he's doing these things and getting rich, and your spouse is getting unhappy with you because you aren't doing it. Pretty soon you start doing it. And so you get what I call the natural progression, the three I's: the innovators, the imitators, and the idiots. And that's what happens. Everybody just kind of goes along. And you look kind of silly if you disagree."

    -- Warren Buffett

This quote is about the current U.S. financial crisis, but I think it applies to all sorts of things. Like XML, for example.

Update 2008/10/03: And automake.