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  • From: Michael S Czeiszperger <czei AT webperformanceinc.com>
  • To: "InterNetWorkers" <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: The list isn't blowing up yet?
  • Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 12:58:49 -0400


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On Friday 07 September 2001 11:54 am, you wrote:
> The key word here is "proprietary". Most technical standards like
> railroad gauges, 60 hz AC, and so forth are established by agreement
> among several players within a given industry and controlled by the
> government (NSI) or trade groups. Most industry standards are
> established and managed openly. Microsoft wants to establish standards
> for a huge segment of our world and control them from behind closed
> doors. Brutal, yes.
>

I've found that the open source movement has taken focus away from open
standards, which is unfortunate. With open standards, it doesn't matter if
you have access to the source, since anyone can implement the standard, and
there's no question of ownership. Companies can cooperate with regards to
defining standards, and then compete on the quality of the implementation.

Open source without open standards isn't quite as useful, as source quite
often isn't cross platform, and can be quite complex so the protocols, file
formats, etc, can be obfuscated.

The next big thing to look at in terms of standards is .NET. Microsoft will
make C# the language a standard of some sort, but in typical fashion is
hiding the fact that most of the C# code won't run on non-Microsoft
platforms. The reason is only the bare language itself will be a standard,
not the libraries, and the libraries will mostly be wrappers around existing
Windows APIs, which are proprietary. This way they can claim to support
standards, while making sure that no one will either be able to implement a
competing product, or port the C# libraries to other platforms.

- --
Michael S Czeiszperger
czei AT webperformanceinc.com

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