re: Standards debate

At 00:24 25/11/00 +0000, you wrote:

>Maybe the disagreement here boils down to:
>
>Tony says (correctly pragmatic, IMO) This is the way it "is"...
>
>Terry says (correctly idealistic, IMO) This is the way it "could"
>be...

Ballendo -

Thanks for the summary - I appreciate your balanced view!

A couple of final clarifications before I drop this subject.

As far as I can tell, Terry and I do not differ terribly much in terms of
what "could" be - as anyone who has been involved in the development of LAN
standards in IEEE 802 will know, I have been a strong supporter of the idea
of making our standards freely available. So in your characterization
above, I am both pragmatic (this is how it is) and idealistic (this is how
it should be).

In the practical politics of commercial product developments that relate to
standards, none of this really matters a damn - the cover price of a
standard is frankly irrelevant when an organization is contemplating the
cost of developing a standards-based product - it is simply the price of
the entry ticket to play in that particular commercial theme-park. The
more important consideration is the level of acceptance of the standard
concerned in the industry sector of interest. The massive success of the
IEEE 802 LAN standards, for example, means that, if you want to play in the
LAN marketplace, there is no option but to read and understand the relevant
IEEE 802 standards - and the cover price is no barrier if you are serious
about developing product. The reason that the IEEE 802 standards have been
so successful over the years (despite the fact that they are not free!) is,
to quote a colleague of mine, because "We aren't developing standards, we
are developing an industry" - and an industry in this case that amounts to
many billions of $$ of annual revenue worldwide. Interestingly, as a
result of the success of these standards, no-one in the LAN marketplace
seriously believes that proprietary (non-standard) LAN solutions are viable
other than on a very short-term tactical basis.


All well and good for the manufacturers - however, the cover price is still
a barrier to other legitimate readers of standards documents - such as the
users, academic institutions, etc..that might want to know what is going
on. For that reason, and that reason alone, I believe that standards
should be made freely available - the guys that are being "done to" by the
standards development process (the user population) shouldn't have to pay
to find out what is being done to them by the manufacturers.

Where Terry and I really differ is in analyzing the motivation behind "why
it is" - and I believe that this really boils down to the age old debate
between the "conspiracy theory" and the "cock-up theory" of why things
happen. I believe (from intimate experience of the workings of some of the
more significant standards orgs in the world, over almost 2 decades) that
the fact that some standards organizations still charge for their documents
is simply a cock-up - not a conspiracy based on greed or any other base
motivation.

Regards,
Tony