[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Why do we write standards?
"Michael S. Brothers" wrote: > > This thread is fascinating. I liken much of what I have heard to the > efforts to standardize HDTV, and if you look at that, it's hard to call > standardization anything else but good for consumers. HDTV is actually an interesting example. Look at the debates over just what HDTV should be ... square pixels (making life easier for companies working with digital content already) vs rectangular ones (making existing analog content provider companies happier), pure digital (new vendors) vs incremental evolution (installed base), etc. All the issues there have a strong "this answer is better for me" vendor tie. Yet ... exactly which consumers were beating down doors to get that? Not many, and the HDTV standards took years to stabilize. Vendor push was essential; and of course, customer indifference to most early versions. There were governmental issues too. Just because consumers _eventually_ get a benefit doesn't preclude corporations using standards process to achieve strategic advantage. That's a very well known aspect of standards strategies; if you play effectively, the consumer dollars go to _your_ company, not to your competitors. The game theoretic result is also visible: companies work to water down anything that'd give too much focus. "Committee design" specs are a familiar outcome of such a process. > Standards are not Socialist, nor are they in the best interest of a > consortia, rather are the key to true consumer freedom. I'm not sure where that comes from, but if you are claiming that corporate interests don't have a strong (and sometimes compelling) degree of leverage over the standards which get developed, I strongly suggest that you look more closely at even just the last ten years of technology development. "Joe Sixpack" doesn't propose standards, or even directly fund their evolution. That fits into the "top down"/"bottom up" ("how") dimension as affecting motivations ("why"). As the man said, "follow the money ...". - Dave xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; unsubscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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