On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Steve Downey wrote: > You chose a definition that suits your argument. In the industry, the > definition is usually more like:
I just used google. > "That which is established by authority as a rule for the measure of > quantity, extent, value, or quality; esp., the original specimen weight or > measure sanctioned by government, as the standard pound, gallon, or yard." > Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, C 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc. But you need to look up 'authoritiy' first. Your definition is wrong from start: it's Kg, Meter, Celsius degree ! That's the _standard_, sanctioned by international organizations and most governments :-) > Apache httpd isn't a standard in that sense. It implements a standard, the > HTTP standard, RFC2616, and others. Log4J isn't a standard, it's a product. Again, that depends on the definition of the standard and the definition of authority. What's the standard for networks - OSI or TCP/IP ? By your definition, OSI ( since ISO is a government sanctioned organization - at least at that time IETF wasn't a big authority in comparation ). There are few doznes organizations that self-claim the 'authority' to create standards, and except for ISO and probably ECMA(?) I don't think too many are governement backed. The authority of W3C or IETF comes from the wide acceptance of ( some of ) their specifications. In this sense, JCP has the same authority with for example Microsoft standards. > It's in wide use, but it isn't even universally used within Jakarta. > Commons-logging is closer to a standard than Log4J. [Note, I use log4j in my > applications. It *is* the standard that has been set within my company. That > provides for interop between components that we develop.] Exaclty my point. Each company and project can decide what authority they recognize and the quality of the various (alternative) specifications. And it's perfectly reasonable to expect many organizations to not recognize non-open specifications as standards, regardless of the authority that propose it ( be it MSFT or JCP ). ( by non-open I mean specs with licences that prevent clean room implementation, of course that would also require a dictionary search ) > Tomcat, on the other hand, is a standard. As a Reference Implementation of > the Servlet and JSP specifications, it is authoritative when the I don't think tomcat is a standard, but parts of it may become, if other servers adopt it ( like webapps/ directory ). I think Ant is a standard - at least by my definition - even if it doesn't claim that. Costin -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
