Re: specifications (was Re: Languages: The Bigger the Uglier)

jejones@microware.com (James Jones) wrote:
> ... I recall a SIGPLAN
> Notices article of ten or fifteen years ago which commented on how
> little, supposedly clear, standards bloat once the language they
> describe has spread and the call for standardization arises.


You really shouldn't be surprised by this. The whole point of modern
'standards' is to preserve the existing oligopoly. A few vendors band
together to produce a 'standard' that is precisely the disjoint union
of their existing implementations, including all their warts. This
guarantees that:


1) No other implementation can satisfy the 'standard', thus raising a
'barrier to entry' for any other competitor;


2) The large variation in the standard provides enough resistance to
keep customers from vendor-hopping, but not so much resistance that
the customer feels 'locked in';


2) The 'standard' stops technical progress for 5-10 years while the
vendors catch their breath and accumulate profits for their IPO's and
capital to resist the next onslaught of the unwashed (those with no
investment in the status quo).


(Since the whole point of 'standards' is to stop technical progress,
one wonders why DARPA/ARPA spends _research_ monies promoting
'standards' ??)


------


'Standards' have become a big business -- I believe that the CACM now
has a whole journal dedicated to them.


The amazing thing is that customers have been sucked in by this
marketing hype. Since the whole point of the standard is to segment
the market into little fiefdoms and to raise the barriers to entry (as
well as to raise the barriers to _exit_ by the customers), the net
effect to the customer is substantially higher prices, and guarantees
of higher prices in the future because technical innovation (the only
known antidote to high prices) has been stopped dead in its tracks.


The lack of readily-available, free, online access to these standards
is proof positive of their anticompetitive nature.


By the way, this market segmentation nature of 'standards' is not new.
Spain & Portugal got the Pope (the 'ANSI/ISO' authority of that day)
to split the 'New World' along a certain longitude. Portugal got
screwed by this, and ended up with only Brazil, while Spain got the
remainder. The rest, as they say, is history.
--
www/ftp directory:
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/home.html
[This is wandering into alt.flame territory. End of thread, please, unless
someone can pull it back into compiler-land. -John]


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