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So how do standards come about? Someone does something new. Which means it isn't a standard yet. Otherwise we would still be using 1980's technology "standards"

So how do standards come about? Someone does something new. Which means it isn't a standard yet. Otherwise we would still be using 1980's technology "standards".

zanny 12y ago
There are very discrete routes to standardization through the IETF, ISO, ANSI, etc - you submit proposals, get them vetted, etc. Two examples would be HLS and DASH. HLS is a draft standard of the IETF proposed by Apple, but Apple has never pursued standardization beyond that. This effectively means Apple maintains complete control of HLS and can change it however they want while still passing it off as a pseudo-standard. DASH was made by MPEG-LA, mainly to continue forcing their patent ridden nightmare video codec down everyones throats, but they got through full ISO standardization. The third wheel there would be Flash - not a standard at all, a proprietary streaming protocol that is only usable by Adobe. They have no intent to standardize, and no intent to open the tech up ever. That is the kind of vendor lock in the OP talks about. All three were "something new", but each one did something different. And when you are making a product, you could take explicit steps to document your protocols and architecture, or you could keep it all proprietary and user hostile and try to maintain maximal control of everything. Another good example is messaging. XMPP is another IETF standard, Telegram is a proprietary server with an open protocol, while Skype, iChat, Hangouts, and Whatsapp are wholly proprietary. You can implement XMPP servers or clients, and clients and servers can interoperate (assuming the server lets you, Facebook uses XMPP but their server isn't a full implementation, so you cannot add non-facebook friends in the service, for example). Telegram lets you implement clients however you want, but the protocol is designed to only work with their messaging servers, so you would have to fork the protocol to have server independence from Telegram. The others are all black box protocols nobody else can interoperate with and have no documentation.

So how do standards come about? Someone does something new. Which means it isn't a standard yet. Otherwise we would still be using 1980's technology "standards".

zanny 12y ago

There are very discrete routes to standardization through the IETF, ISO, ANSI, etc - you submit proposals, get them vetted, etc. Two examples would be HLS and DASH. HLS is a draft standard of the IETF proposed by Apple, but Apple has never pursued standardization beyond that. This effectively means Apple maintains complete control of HLS and can change it however they want while still passing it off as a pseudo-standard. DASH was made by MPEG-LA, mainly to continue forcing their patent ridden nightmare video codec down everyones throats, but they got through full ISO standardization. The third wheel there would be Flash - not a standard at all, a proprietary streaming protocol that is only usable by Adobe. They have no intent to standardize, and no intent to open the tech up ever. That is the kind of vendor lock in the OP talks about. All three were "something new", but each one did something different. And when you are making a product, you could take explicit steps to document your protocols and architecture, or you could keep it all proprietary and user hostile and try to maintain maximal control of everything. Another good example is messaging. XMPP is another IETF standard, Telegram is a proprietary server with an open protocol, while Skype, iChat, Hangouts, and Whatsapp are wholly proprietary. You can implement XMPP servers or clients, and clients and servers can interoperate (assuming the server lets you, Facebook uses XMPP but their server isn't a full implementation, so you cannot add non-facebook friends in the service, for example). Telegram lets you implement clients however you want, but the protocol is designed to only work with their messaging servers, so you would have to fork the protocol to have server independence from Telegram. The others are all black box protocols nobody else can interoperate with and have no documentation.