On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 20:02, jtd<[email protected]> wrote: > Only an idiot will commit a folly of proposing and approving multiple > standards when there exists an opportunity of avoiding it.
That assumes that there are costs involved in multiple standards, which is what I'm seeking to question (not necessarily to refute). My question is mainly about concurrent usage of multiple open standards when the costs incurred are questionable (i.e., it is highly unlikely that there will come a situation where a program like OpenOffice.org will stop supporting .txt files). Sometimes it is more convenient to use .txt while at other times .odt is more convenient (at least at a personal level, as I consider things like file size / support for formatting / ease of opening for others, etc.). What would be the arguments against such concurrent use? Thanks for the figures on the railway gauge question. Now contrast that situation with roads of different widths. The difference between the two is that while the different sizes in the former (railway lines) lead to incompatibility (for the trains), the different sizes in the latter does not. So as long as the vehicle (the software) is capable of driving on (using) the different standards, are they really a problem? -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283 _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
