« The Forgent Demand Letters for JPEG Royalties ICANN Approves .XXX Domain »
Industry/Standards cooperation
Posted June 2, 2005 – 7:06 pm by Yakov Shafranovich in Standards(This post was part of a separate “Standards Blog” which has been merged into my main blog)
One of the recurring themes in standards development is the inevitable tug of war between standards bodies and the industry. Many times, specific companies may come up with different ways to solve the same problem and then seek to standardize it either for IPR or PR advantage. However, often part of the process is giving up the right to control the standards process which may mean that the end result might bear no resemblence to the original product. For this reason, many companies are relucant to give up their ideas to become standards. At the same time, it is often happens that the members of the standards body are reluctant to accept ideas from a company since they have been burned badly in the past. This results in friction among standars bodies and the industry, which of course is not good for anyone.
Ideally, the two should work together since it is the industry support which gets a standard rolling. Some of the best examples of that are bodies like the OpenGroup, the WiFi Alliance, and MAAWG which do not seek to impose standards but rather help with implementation and collectively provide industry input to the standards process. Standards bodies should also not ignore industry input but rather seek to engage them in discussions. Like everything this is a balancing act - one that requires a lot of tolerance from all parties.
Tags: asrg —
Permalink | Trackback URL | This post has
