2009/8/5 Pranesh Prakash <[email protected]>: > 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). Fortunately in India the cost would not arise out of use of standards (thanks to no software patents in India) but the cost would be from the software that work on these standards.
> 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? The problem would be when (for profit aka proprietary) standards even if declared open work better on vehicles (software) of a particular make and not too well on other vehicles (vehicles). The vendors can make a better sale and can draw undue advantage with claims that their vehicle runs better on their proprietary (but in theory open standard). Later on with advancement/ extensions in standards; innocent claim: hey this is the usual progress of technology only; the standard can be made platform/ software dependent. In these terms the Internet aka TCP/IP has done much better, it stayed an open standard and has been very successful till date, and it is not even called a standard it is a Request for Proposal. > -- > 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 > -- Cheers Ajay Pal Singh Atwal _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
