Re: JPS Windows only Club or Vendor only Club

[P3D Michael Kersenbrock <michaelk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> The truth is standards adopted by committee  almost never fly.  The 

I'm in the data telecommunications business.  This business is almost
entirely standards based.  A lot of standards are generated by committees.  
Being (committee-generated) standards compliant is VERY important for success.
For instance, some standards have been generated by the ATM Forum
(of which we are a member) and we are producing compliant products.

> reason:  Long before the committee  makes up its mind, some company
> puts out a product that works. 

In many cases one has a lot of product put out by various companies
and they *all* work -- but are incompatible.  They can wait each other
out to see if somebody can dominate the market -- or they can come up
with a compromise standard ("rule" being that the standard isn't
directly compatible with any of the participant's product) and to make
the market one big one rather than fractured small ones.

> Picture formats used most: GIF and JPG

Aren't JPEG and MPEG(1/2) committee standards based? Using
IEEE 802.3 (ethernet)?

Even some products "generated by grad students" like X-windows were
"standards" generated by funding/participation by a consortium of
companies.  Commitee by proxy -- of sorts.

> No commitee was involved in the stereo card format.  No commitee
> was involved in the realist format.  Did anyone you know have
> a vote when movie theaters moved to THX?

Showing examples where committee-standards weren't used doesn't invalidate
them -- just as showing examples of successful standards don't invalidate
market-selected defacto standards.

There are situations where a committee-based standard are invaluable and
successfully used.  The DVD "standard" will be one of those.  HDTV's
grand-alliance generated format should be another.  

Because "popular" computer-3D imaging seems to be a very splittered market
coming up with a decent commmon format that can meet everybody's needs might
be a good idea to unify the market from multiple small ones into a single
larger market.  It also would allow something decent to be defined before
Microsoft buys one of the smaller players and makes their format standard.  :-)

Wouldn't it be nice if NASA could post  a single format that everybody's
software/hardware (from different companies) could all use directly?  A
committee to generate such a format could make it happen -- assuming the
members all agreed to support that standard, and did so.

It may be that the market isn't "ready" to do this, but it probably would
be of benifit to the market as a whole, and to users as a whole if they did so.


Mike K.


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