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Re: [News] [SOT] Lessig Calls for Government Not to Be Run by Corporations, Shareholders

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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