Beyond that, we don't sell HTML; we use it for gift wrapping.  It's the
content inside it that has value.  The HTML has zero value.

That is the problem with the 'standard as the lock on market' theory.  It's
bogus.  Unless one has a patent, the fight to put a de facto standard or any
standard in play is the same fight that Bugsy Siegel had with Meyer and
Charlie to put a casino in the desert.  Once the casino is there and the
roads are there, everyone gets to ride on them.  Everyone built casinos ...
just after Meyer's Man Blew Bugsy's Brains Out.

The best thing any standard as a standard has going for it is being
royalty-free and unencumbered so the cost of distribution goes down.
Otherwise, it is better to have patents to lock out competitors just as
Buffet says.  

It isn't the platform but the scale of distribution that determines the
value of the content.

That is why Apple only has 4.7% of the PC market but a much larger share of
the online music market, yet compared to the pirates, Apple is a small
potatoes outfit there too.   The problem of piracy is cheap illegal goods do
well until the Queen's Navy catches up.  The problem of fighting a majority
commercial open standard with a minority commercial open standard is
firepower if you can't lock in the content as Apple does with the iPod and
Linden Labs/IBM are attempting with online community 3D.  Again, the problem
is ANYONE can build a 3D community server site and anyone can build a
cheaper music player and will just as anyone could build casinos.  It comes
down to a lock on the talent after that, and the Boys became very good at
the exclusive performance contracts clauses.

Bugsy lost.  He didn't make it to the second emergence phase because he lost
all of the Boy's money financing the first emergence and everyone else
cashed in on it.  Meyer made money holding on to the Flamingo stock but
Meyer always made money at least until Cuba.  He kept it too.

Maybe everyone else should get out of the way and let the market do what the
market does best:  place bets in multiple casinos.

len

From: Rick Jelliffe [mailto:rjelliffe@a...] 
 
Michael Kay said:

> Certainly that's a field where multiple standards coexist. It would be
> better if there was only one, but that isn't always achievable.

I wouldn't even go as far as saying that it is always better to have one.
Rich ecosystem, etc. Also, as I think Michael is suggesting, if a standard
at ISO is basically an agreement between the participants, and if the
participants don't ultimately agree, then having two standards is just the
best that can be done.

For example, what about HTML? Are we better off having HTML and XHTML?
They pretty much overlap.

If it were decided to only have one standard for everything, does this
mean that ISO DSDL would have to decide whether to de-standardize either
DTDs or RELAX NG?  Choose between the different flavours of ISO PDF? That
the DOCBOOK people at OASIS would have to replace any structures that
overlap with ODFs?

More realistically, it also comes down to power. There are "enabling"
standards and "proscriptive" standards. XML is an enabling standard.
Closed DTDs are prosciptive standards; the trouble with proscriptive
standards is that they can allow the "majority" (i.e. whoever was
organized or together enough to get the first vote") to dictate to the
"minority". I don't like first-past-the-post technical restrictions,
whether by patent or by standard.