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| "In many areas programming languages, graphics, CDs, DVDs, etc multiple standards exist" You make the common mistake of confusing standards with products. CDs and DVDs - There's only one standard for each of them that I'm aware of - for pre-recorded content, at least - and that fact allowed both technologies to flourish. For recordable DVD, there were, indeed, multiple standards DVD-R, DVD+R both with their rewriteable variants, DVD-RW and DVD+RW and DVD-RAM. And what a pain in the arse it was for a long time, with nobody quite sure which type of recorder they should buy. Thankfully, the appearance of cheap multi-format recorders alleviated the problem, but it was one that should really not have occurred in the first place. Compare the growth of CD and DVD to the situation we have today with the new generation of DVD. We have two rival standards, Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and theyre totally incompatible. The result The markets stalled nobodys buying them until they sniff a winner. The winner becomes the single standard. The people want a single standard, get it? Cheers, - Mike |
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| Mike Brown | mike_brown@hotmail.com | 27 Jul 2007 @ 07:42 | |
| Thanks Mike So if I understand you correctly, the first standard approved (regardless of how good or bad it is) locks out everything else? I can't see how that differs from eg software patents. The main point about competing standards is the market decides - not some arbitrary committee trying to second guess what the real world wants. Remember the costly disaster that was GOSIP for example - which consumed huge amounts of public money and delivered precisely nothing (other than a lot of pain and grief). It was the market standards - such as TCP/IP - that succeeded. When there was a single standard everyone was using for file formats - the .doc format for example - many critics complained about a "monoculture". Now it sounds like you're asking for a monoculture in all aspects of technology. Jerry |
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| jerry | ntouk.com | 27 Jul 2007 @ 08:55 | |
| Jerry, "the first standard approved regardless of how good or bad it is locks out everything else" I wouldn't say that. In an ideal world, proponents of conflicting "standards" would get together and work out some compromise. I believe that this happened with the original DVD format, which at one point was set to repeat the VHS/Betamax divide until common sense prevailed. Another example I remember was X2 vs KFlex for 56K dial-up modems. They were both good technologies, but having two of them was to nobody's benefit. You had to buy a modem that matched the technology that your ISP used, or vice versa. In fact, many ISPs simply stayed at 32K, until a compromise was reached with the V.90 standard. So, multiple "standards" actually harmed technological progress in that case. Sorry, I know nothing of the history of GOSIP vs TCP/IP. If GOSIP was rubbish then it obviously deserved to fail. If you want to argue that ODF is the new GOSIP, and that OOXML, a "standard" that thinks 1900 was a leap year, is the new TCP/IP, then you are free to do so! Oh and isn't TCP/IP a Microsoft technology by the way? I eman, it used to appear under "Microsoft Protocols" in Windows Network settings! .doc is not a standard and never has been, except in the "de facto" sense. The "monoculture" complaints were more to do with the fact that this particular culture was controlled by a single entity, which changed the format at will, thereby forcing users to upgrade to the latest version of its product. Cheers, - Mikebr |
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| Mike Brown | mike_brown@hotmail.com | 1 Aug 2007 @ 03:13 | |
| Thanks Mike In fact, both Betamax and VHS survived - in their respective markets. Professional broadcasters used Betamax while consumers used VHS. That actually seems a great illustration to me of why two standards in the same area makes sense when different users have different requirements. If Open XML did not respect all the intrinsic behaviours of functionality that go back to 1-2-3/Visicalc etc, it wouldn't serve its purpose. That's the whole point of the difference here between ODF and Open XML - they're doing very different things in the same area. De facto standards are often the best way of ensuring a standard actually works - by getting mainstream market adoption that can then be taken into the de jure process. GOSIP was a classic example of trying to out-guess the market through committee-imposed designs - hence its failure. Given your definition of the monoculture issue as you see it, presumably the fact that the Open XML file formats are under independent, standards-body control is a great thing? Since no longer is Microsoft able to directly control the format - it's the standards bodies that do that now. That's to me the significance of this move - and to be welcomed, not attacked. Jerry |
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| jerry | ntouk.com | 14 Aug 2007 @ 13:28 | |
