I would argue against this. A standard should be something that is published somewhere and adhered to. Whether it is in general use or not is beside the point. For example, a Word document is not a standard --- there is no reference available (free or otherwise) that tells you how to decode it. Worse than that, it varies with the year.
Betamax may have lost to VHS, but that's not the point. There are many VCR manufacturers, and they can all read VHS tapes, and do so without problems. There is no "sony tapes don't work in my mitsubishi player" rubbish that we have with web browsers at the moment. I'm sure you can still find a standard describing Betamax and build your own VCR to read beta tapes if you want. But if another wordprocessor takes over from Word, and no one still has a copy, how do you read those word documents that people are archiving important information with? - Mark > Unfortunately we *are* fighting a monopoly which means many of the > "standards" are going to be defined by that monopoly whether we like it > or not. The best way of doing something has _never_ been a reason for > the general acceptance of a standard especially in computer technology > but elsewhere also. (remember Betamax?) > > The _only_ thing that defines a generally used standard is... > general use
