The author needs an education in the need and importance of standards and the pitfalls and reasons for the existence of multiple standards. Firstly standards do not stifle innovation or the ability to earn. In fact it allows much wider participation and hence much more innovation and creation of wealth. Nothing in a standard prevents multiple implementations and thereby innovation, effeciency and consequent creation of wealth. The above is true only if the standard is available freely and without patent / copyright encumberances, for use and implementation. Thus if the standards are not open and unencumbered, the standard will actually stifle innovation and wealth creation. Quite the opposite result of what the author states. The author is confusing wealth hoarding for a microscopic miniority with wealth creation for the majority
Secondly multiple standards came into existence PRIOR to or in parallel with the standards process, primarily to carve out niche markets. In most cases geographically isolated regions had set a particular standard and subsequent globalisation forced the use of multiple standards. In every case of multiple standards, the end user bears the hughe costs of supporting interoperability (which the author convienently bandys about without understanding the implications) by having to purchase additional goods and or services. Some examples: PAL /SECAM /NTSC tv broadcast systems. Every television set had to incur additional costs to incorporate circuitry which they rarely used. Every broadcaster had to incur costs converting feeds from one format to the other. The Indian railways will be spending a whopping Rs.16500 Cr (and most likely a substantially higher amount) for converting 18000Km of narrow and meter gauge lines to broad gauge in the next few years. This is excluding the costs of 7000 odd Km already converted since 1992. They need to do so to minmise their costs and provide seamless services. Most readers will be very familiar with the hassle of transiting from Broad gauge to meter gauge in the course of their travels. The existence of multiple standards should be viewed as a failure of the standardisation process and a burden on the public, instead of being justified on grounds of innovation,creation of wealth and other lame reasons. There are several other technical reasons (software bitrot, vast volume of data, life times of data, authenticity, security etc), that are even more pressing in case of egovernance, which will absolutely mandate single, open and unecumbered standards. But that would require a series of articles. These suggestions for multiple standards have suddenly sprung up after NASSCOM and MAIT (without consulting their members) have proposed such changes. Several members of NASSCOM have spoken strongly against NASSCOM's statement. A newspaper of your standing would do well to whet such factually wrong articles before publishing. -- Rgds JTD _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
