[odf-discuss] One standard (was: GNOME Foundation Statement...)

[Jonathon Coombes]

On 26/11/2007, at 11:55 AM, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:

> Jeff Waugh wrote:
>>      We don't believe that it is in our best interests to condemn  
>> OOXML on
>>      the basis that there should be "only one standard". This is a  
>> political
>>      demand, not related to the ISO rules or process, and not  
>> useful to us
>>      in the future. We're not going to use short-term attacks that  
>> will have
>>      a negative impact on us in the future.
>>      You're likely to disagree with that. That's okay. But when we  
>> start
>>      pitching, say, an unencumbered, Open and Free video codec to  
>> ISO (which
>>      would be a massive win for Freedom), be aware that the "only one
>>      standard" argument would *massively* hurt us in that mission.  
>> An ISO
>>      standard for video already exists, and it's horrifyingly  
>> encumbered.
>
> I was thinking about this yesterday. I wasn't aware of the specific  
> example Jeff cites, but I could think of many hypothetical  
> situations where a bad standard might exist, and we would not want  
> to oppose approval of a better (rival) standard on the grounds of  
> "there should be only one standard".

This is a very important point and one I approached in a presentation  
at the Open Standards Conference in Sydney recently. My talk was  
about the reasons why two standards should not exist, and I made it  
very clear that I meant two opposing standards in at the same time.  
The concept many people have is that once the standard is there,  
there can't be any others for that particular domain, but evolution  
of the domain sometimes requires multiple standards for the same  
domain. The example I used was in terms of graphical formats with  
TIFF being the supposed be-all-and-end-all of formats. It was  
extensible and open and so the question remains why is it not the  
only standard being used for graphics today? Well the reasons are  
many, but one primary reason is that the domain evolved - new  
algorithms, Internet requiring better compression, alpha/transparency  
capabilities etc. This meant new standards were proposed "against"  
existing ones, and in this situation is appropriate as an evolution  
of the domain. The big issue of concern is when we have more than one  
standard within the same domain addressing the same problem at the  
same time. So again, I concur with the caution about suggesting we  
can have only "one standard" without clarifying very carefully how  
this is defined and why.

Regards
Jonathon

--------------------------
Jonathon Coombes
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