Quote:
Originally Posted by dorino
I remember reading that there was an ISO standard for a cup of tea, but I don't see Lipton being held to it... Forgive me if I'm wrong, but ISO standards just give a point of comparison, and mean nothing in terms of control.
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The catch is that the ISO standard is controlled by the standards body once submitted. You can submit changes, but it doesn't mean you can get the ISO body to accept all those changes or that you can coerce developers to use your implementation when they can use the ISO standard and be more compatible. So the
standard is controlled by the ISO body.
Unfortunately, while an interesting analogy (there is in fact an ISO standard for how to brew tea in a consistent manner), it doesn't apply in the same way as a technical standard. Central control is even more important in the technology game.
If Lipton brews their tea differently, it doesn't really mean anything, other than certain people might like it more or less.
If Apple produces PDFs that don't conform to the standard, then I'm not able to give that PDF to my potential employer and have them be able to read my resume. If they can't read my resume, I don't get an interview, and I stop using that product to produce my resume.
Interoperability is big in technology, although there are always 'de facto standards' that aren't real standards, but because everyone uses them, they become one (like how parts of the video community decided hacking the AVI format to support MPEG-4/DivX/XviD video and MP3 audio got turned into a 'standard' of sorts in some groups).