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Re: Why Standards?

• To: ari@c... (K. Ari Krupnikov)
• Subject: Re: Why Standards?
• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
• Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 10:04:00 -0400
• Cc: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>,xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <m3u1bej0ss.fsf@t...>
• References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030521142313.0452fae8@n...><20030519152736.GB12551@p...><3EC8E25C.7080804@a...><5.2.0.9.0.20030519102416.0365c008@n...><20030519152736.GB12551@p...><5.2.0.9.0.20030521142313.0452fae8@n...>

At 01:04 PM 5/28/2003 -0700, K. Ari Krupnikov wrote:
>Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...> writes:
>
> > Also, for many web technologies,
> > interoperability matters from the beginning. Perhaps the W3C could
> > have waited 5 years to standardize HTML, adopting whatever form of
> > HTML succeeded in the free market, but that might have made it
> > extremely difficult for smaller vendors and would have resulted in
> > huge incompatibilities among browsers.
>
>You must be joking. Are you saying that adherence to W3C HTML Recs is
>what would have saved the smaller vendors from the larger one?

It's only one piece of the puzzle, but it is an important piece. At least, 
it has been for the four XML or SGML technology companies I have worked 
for, which were all smaller vendors that felt my involvement in standards 
was strategically important to them.

Suppose my company wants to provide a product that contains a query 
language for XML. Many developers would not put the time into learning a 
proprietary query language developed by my company, but would put time into 
learning a W3C query language. We can also get visibility by being seen as 
a leader that helped develop the query language. Earlier, the issue was 
APIs for XML, and at two earlier companies we saw strong market resistance 
to learning our proprietary XML APIs, which was overcome by making SAX and 
DOM available in our products. (SAX is one of the few examples of a 
de-facto standard developed by a mailing list, outside of a formal 
standards process.)

Suppose this work is not done in a standards body. Smaller vendors suffer 
in two ways. First, resistance to learning proprietary technologies such as 
proprietary APIs or query languages makes the market reluctant to adopt 
innovative technologies from smaller companies. The small company has to 
wait for one of the larger vendors to establish a de-facto standard, and by 
that time the larger vendors have captured much of the market. Second, the 
smaller vendor loses the ability to be seen as a leader and an innovator, 
because the larger company did the original work.

So yes, I'm quite serious, and the companies that have employed me have 
been quite serious about this. Standards bodies are an important way to 
level the playing field. Of course, you need more than just standards 
bodies to give smaller companies a fair shake.

Jonathan 

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Why Standards?
    • From: ari@c... (K. Ari Krupnikov)

• References:
  • Re: Why Standards?
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
  • Re: Why Standards?
    • From: Adam Turoff <ziggy@p...>
  • Why Standards?
    • From: Jim Ancona <jim@a...>
  • Re: Why Standards?
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
  • Re: Why Standards?
    • From: ari@c... (K. Ari Krupnikov)

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