Craig Gullixson wrote:
>> There will always be a need for standard hardware platforms and
>> reference designs, but the source suffices for software, file formats,
>> protocols and so on.
>>
>
>I beg to differ. As a developer, all I really care about is the
>published standards. Source is nice to have as a reference
>implementation, but parsing such source to determine file formats,
>protocols, etc., tends to be both difficult and propogates bugs in
>the reference implementation. Standards promote competition and
>prevent vendor lock-in.
>
>Look at Word for example. One of the reason that Word, in all of
>its variations, is so pervasive, is that it has become a defacto
>document exchange standard. This has worked well as a revenue
>generator as tweeking the "standard" results in pretty much everyone
>having to upgrade so that they can read each other's documents. I
>submit that even if the source to the various Word versions was freely
>available, it still would not be all that useful as it wouldn't be
>*stable*. As features are added and other features are implemented
>in different ways, chaos would reign when trying to put together
>truely portable documents.
>
>Standards bodies can and do bring some order and discipline to the
>development of standards and makes various core software packages,
>protocols, and formats useful for everyone.
>
>The attempts to corrupt the standards bodies to benefit particular
>corporations is not only deplorable, but is also dangerous to the
>industry. While the standardization processes need to be modified
>to prevent such corruption, I firmly believe that formal standards
>are essential for a true competitive environment.
Good post!
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