Re: Changing Standards - Flashback

Hector,

At 08:50 PM 10/6/2004, you wrote:
> Back in 1992/93, I went to the Microsoft Software Developer Conference at
> Seattle.  I arrived at the hotel around 5-6pm. I went to my room, exhausted
> from long Miami to Seattle trip,  I turned on the TV and laid down.  I got
> excited when a local Seattle news station came on with an interview with
> Bill Gates about the upcoming/next day MS Software Developer Conference.
>
> I recall a statement that stayed with me till this day when he was asked how
> he deals with competitors and how does MS stay on top as the market leader.
> His answer was, honest to god,  no lie, this is what he said:
>
>         "We stay ahead of our competitors by changing the standards every
> two years."
Might it be argued that Mr. Gates' purported statement above was not 
referring to standards in the sense we discuss here on this list, but more 
as a marketing statement?  In other words, to a marketer, raise the bar, up 
the ante, change the standards might all mean roughly the same 
thing.   Arguably, "up the standard" rather than "changing the standards" 
might have been a better way to phrase, but when one is preparing for a big 
event at late hours, the mind gets a bit exhausted.
When you think about it, Microsoft did and still does try to get out new 
releases of software every two years or so.  If memory serves, that was 
especially so during the early 1990s time frame with their application 
suite and OS releases.
I hope nobody holds me to words I might utter to media or anyone else when 
near exhaustion just before a major presentation for key partners for 
projects my company is working to roll out.  Especially so when those 
utterances might be dredged up from a time during a ramping up period well 
over ten years in the past.
> This is not bashing. It is just a scary thought about MS that has always
> stayed with me.  Its on tape in the local tv news station achives if proof
> is required.
Nobody is perfect and not everything you see or hear on tapes from long ago 
ring fond memories to their creators.  Come to think of it, I have some 
tapes from a local Denver business talk radio show I produced and hosted 
for two years back in the late 1990s and possibly some master tapes of 
interactive satellite video broadcast training I developed the model for 
and hosted in a past life that I should probably go find and burn now... ;-)
> How this related to SPF?  Well,  I hate to be in a position where SPF will
> be changing every year or every 2 years!  Who will own the specs and
> standard definition?  Meng?  Under what entity?  Or will it be Microsoft
> when SPF2 begins to promote SenderID?
Why would such things take place?  The Internet participants themselves 
won't permit it.  Changes are generally adopted only if sufficient value 
added is perceived by adopters in making them.  Once I publish the basic 
SPF DNS TXT records that suit my company's needs for domain identity 
protection in email, only a really big change (e.g., wide spread support 
for SPF RR records) is probably going to make me go back and have records 
adjusted in company DNS zone files.
I think that the challenges ahead for SPF will primarily stem from being 
able to respond to more of the corner case needs.  In some situations, as 
unfortunate as it may seem, the best answer for some may be, "if you wish 
to exchange email in the future with others, you can't do what you have 
been doing anymore because it compromises security or other needs upon 
which nearly everyone else on the Internet depend".
Large companies are not inherently evil and they all started out as small 
companies and/or small group operations within larger companies.  The 
biggest asset large companies supporting an open standard bring to the 
table is their reach and consequential ability to pervasively promote such 
a standard.  Most of these companies and others who participate on the 
Internet understand that standards burdened by ownership rights and 
licences are probably not really standards at all.
The expression "armies of lawyers" coming to mind here may be fitting.  The 
job of armies is to go forth, break things and kill people.  Corporate 
counsel around here has said that business people make deals and lawyers 
break them.  I suppose that concept is somewhat self evident, but it does 
underscore why open standards seem to make sense in an overly litigious 
world.  For the record, our corporate counsel may have indeed gone forth 
and broken a few deals (done only in the best interests of the company), 
but has not actually killed any people to my knowledge or to the best of my 
recollection. ;-)
As regards proprietary property, by way of example, perhaps you might 
remember what happened when Microchannel architecture was introduced by IBM 
back in the early days of the personal computer.  The rest of the industry 
answered that proprietary licensed architectural growth path solution with 
EISA, an open architectural standard.  Microchannel, though a good 
architecture, failed to achieve its goals for IBM and the world moved 
on.  Large companies like IBM often do learn from mistakes and I think, in 
part, that is why IBM has become such a proponent of embracing open 
standards today and also think that they are doing well for themselves and 
others in making such moves.
On the Internet, it seems that the most productive and useful applications 
are best accomplished by common agreement, what some call open standards of 
interoperability.  I think this always has been true and probably always 
will.
History records the contributions people and companies make to open 
standards on the Internet and that really should become its own reward for 
the participants.  It is what people and companies build atop these 
standards that allows them to profit or make further contributions from as 
each sees fit.
> Sincerely,
>
> Hector Santos, CTO
> Santronics Software, Inc.
> http://www.santronics.com
> 305-431-2846 Cell
> 305-248-3204 Office
Best,

Alan Maitland
The Commerce Company - Making Commerce Simple(sm)
http://WWW.Commerco.Com/