A House Divided: UWB's Double Standards

Mai writes "What happens when two coalitions within a standard come into conflict, and it doesn't get resolved quickly? The ultrawideband technology standard shows you."

Comments

That's what you get.

[Dylan Thomas]

That's what you get when you put the standard before the technology. Step one: let companies use whatever standard is convenient for them, and sell their products to whomever they can convince to buy. Step two: once the market has tested the products, standardize based on best current practices.

Sure, it has the net result of lots of poor guys owning a collection of relatively useless Betamax videos, but really, I'd rather own an obsolete product because it made its best shot and failed than own a mediocre product because it conformed to a political compromise that had no market time behind it. (And furthermore, it encourages the Betamax owners to switch to DVD more quickly than the content and universally supported VHS owners, thereby even further spurring development.)

For real life examples, read some W3C Recommendations. The ones that were presented as ready-made standards before any market was actually implementing them (like PICS) are lovely pieces of technological poetry. The ones which were widely tested in the market and implemented first, even if in lots of non-compatible subversions, and only then standardized (like HTML), on the other hand, are actually used.