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The Pitfalls and Perks of Adopting a New Standard
Monta writes to tell us that IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting article about the pros and cons of 'adopting a standard before it becomes one'. From the article: "Whether a standard will succeed and be widely adopted is ambiguous at first, regardless of who endorses it -- a major player or a fringe element. So if most people don't like to welcome the new guy, why would they put all their eggs in a standards basket when that basket might not exist tomorrow?"
For one example of pitfalls and perks, consider stylesheets. Netscape threw their weight behind JSSS, Internet Explorer threw their weight behind CSS. CSS got taken up by the W3C, JSSS got chucked. Internet Explorer 3 was first with CSS support, Netscape 3 had none, and Netscape 4's CSS support was an abysmal wrapper around JSSS.
Another example is XSLT; Microsoft implemented a draft version, and ended up with support that was incompatible with the final specification and later versions of their own browser.
Of course, who was first doesn't matter in the long run. What matters is an ongoing commitment to conformance - being first with partial support means nothing if you do as Microsoft did with CSS and forget to implement the rest for years.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Wrong standard.
That's like comparing being a karma whore to to posting in English. Yes there's some grey area with technology standards since we do choose among new ones but it's still not the same.
Assuming a normal distribution on the bell curve, aiming for "standard" is to aim right for the big, juicy middle of the curve. Doesn't that mean you're aiming for average overall?
No. Did you read the article, and understand any of it? If you did, maybe you'd understand what is meant by "standard."
A standard, in this context, is not a statistical point or distribution of points that falls on a bell curve. It is not the "average" level of quality, it's not even a measurement of quality. It is, instead, a set of criteria that is generally accepted by consensus of the community. Typically, this is to allow interoperability and product substitution capacity, and is necessary for consumer adoption of new technology.
Look at Betamax vs. VHS, for example. Would it do you any good, as a movie distributor, to create a new standard for videocassette content delivery that is better than Betamax or VHS? Because VHS is only "average"?
To take that a step further, say you are developing what you hope to be the next "standard" for in-home movie content delivery, the Laserdisc. Would it make sense for you to develop an entirely new interface between the TV and your device, when most of your potential customers already have televisions that have coaxial cable connectors?
Standard != average. Standard = used by the majority.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Getting a product to market with a new technology can advance the adoption of a standard.
This is true not only for standards that spend years wallowing through standards boards - someone releases an implementation, and it lights a fire under their asses to get something out the door - but also by creating de facto standards that advance the state of the art. Most of the innovations didn't come from large and wide standards bodies, but rather by a couple of people who did something that was adopted and spread. To bring up an evil example, AJAX is founded on a completely proprietary piece of COM functionality accessible via scripting in Internet Explorer. Pretty soon it became a part of the standard.
Coincidentally I wrote about this yesterday.