Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Microsoft defends vendor standards lead
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Microsoft has defended vendor-led standards and interoperability work rather
>| than waiting for industry bodies to reach an open consensus.
> `----
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/08/microsoft_standards/
>
It doesn't work. The reason why the ITU used to take so long to write
standards is because it is bl**dy difficult to do a good job of it,
particularly when trying to write state machines in English.
The IETF was touted as the cool baby of the 1990s, so much quicker than
the ITU, well, it was, but only because it wasn't doing the job
properly, or well at all, in many cases. It has delivered, for example,
shedloads of reasonably useless protocols trying to make IP connection
oriented, none of which work (nor will they be able to). There are
plenty more examples like that one, of course.
The best way of writing state-machine standards, which includes things
like file formats, of course, is by writing the source-code of the
machine which creates them in public, which is precisely how ODF came
to be. The reason ODF can be described so simply, whereas Microsoft's
format takes 6,000 pages of contradictory tosh, is that the source code
is properly visible and available for the ODF formats, so, when someone
wants to know what a given bit, bit-map, byte, field, or whatever is for,
they can simply look in the source of an ODF writer or reader and find
out how it is used.
Thus, one of the great and most pointless games of the 1990s and 2000s,
the "interoperability testing fair" becomes completely unecessary.
So, consensus does take longer to reach? Well, actually, not always, no.
If you look at ODF, it was standardised /before/ Microsoft attempted to
corrupt all those government bodies and push their proprietary format
through.
They first tried this argument at the end of the 1980s, and all of us
involved in standards work then laughed, knowing the mess which would
ensue. Well, it did, we're here now, and it's a total mess. We live in
a world of proprietary file formats, specifically designed to /prevent/
interoperability - and Microsoft expect us to accept that industry
standards are better because they are /quicker/? Speed never was the
requirement, interoperability was the requirement. Microsoft have
created a problem we never had, and offered a fix we neither needed nor
wanted.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
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| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
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