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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?"
What does it mean to have or be a "standard"? Average business practices? Average technology? "Average" doesn't sound too bad, but the word "mediocre" sure does. As a business owner, I would hate to have mediocre technology.
When your software is online, running on servers, controlled entirely by you... why go for average or mediocre? Why not be smart about it and go for something simple that bucks the "standard" trend? (SOA comes to mind).
Critical thinking and a complete disregard for standards (especially tech standards driven by corporations with marketing agendas) is useful when creating your own technology. It's the only way to break out of "mediocre".
I could be wrong. Your mileage may vary.
You forgot a step.
1.5) Ignore it while calling yourself "the industry standard".
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
One well-adopted "standard" (which isn't a standard at all) is ID3 (and its successor, ID3V2), the standard for tagging files with metadata.
The interesting thing here is that it is as standard proposed and written in the spirit of Open Source -- its development is moderated by a core group of loosely-knit volunteers, and anyone can contribute to the discussion.
It has been adopted by practically every developer -- commercial, open source, Joe-in-Basement, etc. -- of multimedia software, even Microsoft.
No standards body (IEEE, IETF, ISO, NIST, W3C, IANA, etc.) has accepted it as a standard; to my knowledge it has never been submitted to any organization as a proposed standard.
By community involvement and acceptance, it has become a de facto standard, and for the most part everyone plays by the rules.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Maybe Microsoft learned their lesson and isn't being quick to adopt the Open Office file format until it's been established with clear customer demand?
No, I will not work for your startup
Microsoft integrated XML pretty deep into .NET, so naturally they are trumpeting the usefulness of the XML standard and SOA
Oooh... Microsoft! Funny thing about Microsoft, but they suffered a major setback recently. Seems that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts opted for an independantly defined open standard that everyone can use freely, rather than the Microsoft offering which was loaded up with licences and patents and which they could change at will and without consultation. I gather Microsoft were not happy about that. Chairs were thrown, I have no doubt.
Oddly enough, that was about SOAs (Service Oriented Architectures) as well. I know this is a crazy idea, but I expect Microsoft would be purely delighted if everyone ignored the Open Document standard and went on to express their individuality by buying whatever de-facto standard Microsoft might subsequently announce. But then you used lots of dollar signs when talking about VB.NET so I guess you can't really be a Redmond shill. And to think, you nearly had me fooled.
Again, I could be entirely wrong. Your mileage may vary.
Yes, I think it probably will, and I think you probably are. I think people understand perfectly well that open standards means increased competition, and that competition means better products and better value for money.
Certainly, there's only one way to find out. Personally, I'm rather looking forward to it.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!