RE: Authority of the marketplace?

[Nick Arnett]

On 17 Jul 2001, at 0:34, Dean Forster wrote:

> As far as R and D goes with researching new technology
> or improving on existing technology, no corporation
> benefits itself by dragging their feet and doing
> crappy job at anything.

Market leaders benefit tremendously from doing a poor job at standards.
This has been a Microsoft tactic for years.  They slow down standards
efforts while creating a proprietary product or take a standard and corrupt
it into sometime that is proprietary from a practical standpoint.  And they
are far from alone.  I can tell you from first-hand experience that
management at software companies will often get involved in standards
efforts for the express purpose of preventing standards from happening.  I'm
sure it happens in other industries also.

Nick