Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Medical Illustration <druid AT email.unc.edu>]

Yeah no kidding--

Think about the popular theory of why Macs are not the standard desktop --
something to the effect that "PC's allowed you to develop for their platform
for free, whereas Mac charged licensing fees, introduced restrictive
standards, etc..." 

Since anyone could develop anything for a PC (because it was open), there
were more utilities for businesses to use (and cheaper ones), and therefore
businesses said "I want that one"... And this is why everyone I know who
knows nothing about comps repeatedly tells me "But you can't do anything on
a Mac..."... Sigh...

Had that not been the case, Mac might now be the de facto desktop, and the
world would be a much better place (not to mention the fact that I wouldn't
be writing this, because the debate would be different..)...

D


On 3/20/02 3:47 PM, "Michael Czeiszperger" <czei AT webperformanceinc.com>
wrote:

> Edward Wesolowski wrote:
>> No question in my mind that MS standardization has created a market for
>> PC's where there was none, made work, helped personal and corporate
>> economies.
> 
> I agree that standardization has helped create markets. We differ in that I
> believe world wide, public standards have done much more to create markets
> than the defacto "standards" of a single company. In my opinion the main
> reason there was an explosion of startups and technology in the late 90's 
> was
> because of HTTP, SNMP, TCP/IP, and all of the other public, free, and open
> standards.
> 
> The reason is simple-- when companies are free to compete on open standards
> consumers benefit because of the huge amount of new products and services 
> that
> result. When companies are forced out of a market by a monopoly, the amount 
> of
> investment in those areas are greatly reduced.