*>> Remember when Microsoft had nearly taken over the browser world? We sat on IE 6 for *years* and *years*.*
My point being that although the underpinnings were open standards, HTML included, that didn't afford any automatic advantage. A proprietary plug-in doesn't prevent competition with other standards or plug-ins, so I'll have to disagree with your assertion that "proprietary = bad" under the discussed scenario. A bad implementation is a bad implementation independent of the openness or proprietaryness of the thing involved. Sure, if we're dealing with open source, then there's the theoretical option to fix the broken/bad implementation, but in practice, someone else just develops a competing app and/or protocol, and people move to that instead. *Case in point*: For many years, Sendmail was routinely chastised for being buggy and insecure, and the apparent solution was to create other MTAs like qmail, postfix, etc. Fixing sendmail (which eventually happened) was not nearly the primary approach taken. * * *ASB* *http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker* *Harnessing the Advantages of Technology for the SMB market… * On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Ben Scott <mailvor...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 11:33 AM, Andrew S. Baker <asbz...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > HTML5 is no panacea, either... It's a loosely defined "standard" that > will be > > even more loosely adhered to. Welcome back to 1999. > > HTML 5 is on the W3C standards track. It's still in draft status, > but my understanding is that it's not radically changing anymore -- > they're just finishing up the rough edges. > > Compliance with any standard is always an issue, but with a neutral, > open standard you at least have something people can work towards. > HTML 4, CSS, and JavaScript took time to converge, too, but it has > mostly happened and continues to improve. > > > Proprietary plug-ins aren't necessarily a bad thing. > > Yes, they are. They limit implementations to whoever owns the > rights, excluding other implementations. No competition means you're > stuck with whatever is out there. > > Indeed, I would argue that the Flash situation sucks so much > precisely *because* it's a proprietary offering. If it was a *true* > open standard[1] we'd have competing implementations and a way out. > > Remember when Microsoft had nearly taken over the browser world? We > sat on IE 6 for *years* and *years*. There was *zero* progress being > made. Then the Mozilla project came along and actually started giving > Microsoft a reason to care again. > > The limitations of proprietary offerings also mean you have trouble > doing new, clever, and/or creative things -- alternative clients, or > user interfaces, or automation, or machine recognition, etc., etc. > > "Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label > on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the > Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on > another computer, another word processor, or another network." (Tim > Berners-Lee) > > -- Ben > > [1] Flash is not open, regardless of what Adobe claims. What few > specs there are are woefully incomplete and hopelessly out-of-date. > Third-party implementations have to resort to reverse engineering and > bug-for-bug compatibility, while also negotiating the patent > minefield. > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
