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At 01:04 PM 5/28/2003 -0700, K. Ari Krupnikov wrote:
>Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@datadirect-technologies.com> writes:
>
> > Also, for many web technologies,
> > interoperability matters from the beginning. Perhaps the W3C could
> > have waited 5 years to standardize HTML, adopting whatever form of
> > HTML succeeded in the free market, but that might have made it
> > extremely difficult for smaller vendors and would have resulted in
> > huge incompatibilities among browsers.
>
>You must be joking. Are you saying that adherence to W3C HTML Recs is
>what would have saved the smaller vendors from the larger one?
It's only one piece of the puzzle, but it is an important piece. At least,
it has been for the four XML or SGML technology companies I have worked
for, which were all smaller vendors that felt my involvement in standards
was strategically important to them.
Suppose my company wants to provide a product that contains a query
language for XML. Many developers would not put the time into learning a
proprietary query language developed by my company, but would put time into
learning a W3C query language. We can also get visibility by being seen as
a leader that helped develop the query language. Earlier, the issue was
APIs for XML, and at two earlier companies we saw strong market resistance
to learning our proprietary XML APIs, which was overcome by making SAX and
DOM available in our products. (SAX is one of the few examples of a
de-facto standard developed by a mailing list, outside of a formal
standards process.)
Suppose this work is not done in a standards body. Smaller vendors suffer
in two ways. First, resistance to learning proprietary technologies such as
proprietary APIs or query languages makes the market reluctant to adopt
innovative technologies from smaller companies. The small company has to
wait for one of the larger vendors to establish a de-facto standard, and by
that time the larger vendors have captured much of the market. Second, the
smaller vendor loses the ability to be seen as a leader and an innovator,
because the larger company did the original work.
So yes, I'm quite serious, and the companies that have employed me have
been quite serious about this. Standards bodies are an important way to
level the playing field. Of course, you need more than just standards
bodies to give smaller companies a fair shake.
Jonathan
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