Standards Competition

Standards in technology markets has always been a troublesome issue, as standards both facilitate and constrain competition. Now there's a developing battle not between companies promoting different technologies for standardization, but rather between competing standards-developing organizations. Business Process Spec Handed Off to OASIS, Not W3C.

I don't see any difference here. If members of W3C and OASIS competed with different products in the marketplace, everyone agrees that would be great. So the fact that W3C and OASIS are competing to become the standard is no different than Beta v.VHS, which was clearly a good thing for consumers and competition. In fact, had the technologists and the standards groups gotten their hand on VCRs before the marketplace, they probably would have chosen Beta -- wrong!!

 Posted by glenn