here's a quickie rant about software standards sent to Markoff, precipitated by his recent column on Berners Lee & the Web. please help kill the urban legend I refer to in this letter. ------- Forwarded Message Subject: tim berners lee etc. Date: Wed, 20 Dec 95 00:39:44 -0800 From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com> I read your recent article on Tim Berners Lee. there is a misconception in the article that annoys me and that I have seen you/others repeat elsewhere. the following myth is: COMPANIES SET STANDARDS. this is not really true. in the short term, companies can set whatever "standards" they like. but in the long term, the *market* decides what standards are acceptable. an example of this was IBM: they set various standards until the market decided that the "standards" they were setting were not acceptable. they became their own worst enemy. no amount of shovelling their ideas down consumer's throats via million dollar ad campaigns or sales pressure changed the basic reality of what the market wanted. even though "microchannel" may have been technically superior, consumers consistently decided the proprietary price of the architecture was not worth the extra economic burden to obtain it. you and others are continually reiterating and reinforcing this myth in regards to web software in your writing. you talk about various companies as if they could somehow seize various standards for their own and exclude other companies (Netscape's supposed proprietary web "standards" are an example). this is fallacious for the reason I outlined above. the market may not tolerate this exclusivity, and particularly in the area of computer software and hardware this has been shown emphatically so. furthermore, the idea that companies can legislate their own web standards is particularly ludicrous. it is true that netscape has added their own "extensions" that their own browser understands and other browsers initially do not. but nothing prevents other companies from immediately incorporating these "enhancements" so that they are recognized by their own software. in fact this is trivial to do so in many cases (e.g. one of these so-called "enhancements" is blinking text in web pages). so the idea that a single web company can somehow monkeywrench the standards process by introducing new ideas is absurd and completely ignorant of reality. in fact this rapid "standard" fluctation is the heart of innovation. it is true that the web standard is fluctuating very rapidly right now, but that is not evidence of companies trying to seize the standard for their own: instead it is the chief sign of dynamic and rapid innovation. I urge you to read Bill Gate's recent book. he addresses this continual myth that people yammer about, namely the idea that individual companies can set exclusive or proprietary standards. a company standard is in fact a sort of temporary whirlpool in time: it will exist only so long as the forces surrounding it support it. a single company can temporarily create an illusion that their standards are the only ones available, but the market may eventually decide that their standard is not appropriate. Microsoft would crumble in a short amount of time if they failed to deliver what the market demands, and Gates reiterates this theme. it is tempting to think of Microsoft or Netscape as large behemoths that "drive the market". this is true in the short term but in truth over the long term the market drives these companies, and they lose market share if they become irrelevant. it is useful to look at one company as a focus of market forces, not the determinant of them. in my opinion the idea that various companies are in control of the market is not only erroneous but highly dangerous. it leads to the view that the government has to step in to promote "fair competition" or "legislate standards". these approaches are usually total failures because they completely neglect the true nature of the innovation of ideas, something that is expressed quite tangibly and viscerally in software development, but this simple point various people still utterly fail to grasp. its quite dramatic to write about single companies such as Microsoft or Netscape as if they have tremendous power and influence over the industry. various companies have found however that this influence is highly fleeting if they are not in tune with market currents. companies are subservient to the market, not vice versa. please strive to recognize this basic fact in your future writing. p.s. I am willing to work this into a letter to the editor if you are willing to publish it.