How Standards Get a Bad Reputation

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Here's a good article illustrating how "standards" get a bad reputation
given 
people who know a lot about code and little about the kinds of agreements 
standards should provide. 

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-samruby.html?ca=dnt-424

"Ruby: So what we decided to do was, instead, open source it, and say, "Here
is a ubiquitous, in essence de facto reference implementation." It's not
anointed as a reference implementation, but it achieves the same purpose.
It's our way of increasing the probability that this implementation of a
standard is adopted."

That's not standardization; that's marketing.

Standards don't have meaning on the web related to initial agreements about 
the technology.  Maybe we should stop pretending they do.

Specifications create a technology that spawns a market; standards get the
costs 
down for selling to that market, and ideally that cost should be just a
little 
above zero, essentially, the cost of marking the 'yes' slots in the RFP
response.

len