On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 04:16:11PM -0600, Dave Smith wrote:
> Had an interesting discussion in a CS class today about the future of
> Linux/Open Source/Free Software. I was surprised at how prevelant the
> opinion was that computing standards are controlled by corporations. In
> my mind, the public domain has been the driving force in determining how
> the most common standards are to be. Foremost in my mind is IP, followed
> by LDAP, and others. Something that also came to mind was how often in
> the past corporations have had to change their software to match the
> open standards (even in cases when the proprietary standard was better).
> What do you think of this? Who really controlls standards in computing?
> Is it corporate America/World or is it non-profit orgs like IETF?
>
I think you're imposing a false dichotomy between corporate and public
domain standards. Corporations can and do participate in standards
bodies, which is great because it provides common ground for
interoperability between software produced by different corporations.
Sometimes standards proposals come from public sources like
universities, sometimes they come from corporations, but in the end
they're 'open' and beneficial to everyone.
The problem comes when corporations develop proprietary non-standard
protocols. There are a lot of reasons they might want to do this,
including the fact that the software industry moves quickly while
standards bodies move slowly. Witness the slow evolution of the C and
C++ standards. Of course, there's nothing keeping corporations from
making their proprietary protocols and languages open to some degree,
e.g. Sun's Java language. If everyone did this, we could get the speed
of innovation that proprietary protocols offer along with the
interoperability of established standards.
The main difference, as I see it, is the ability of corporations to go
from open to closed protocols at the drop of a hat if they haven't
formally standardized them. That's the dangerous bit, we have to rely
on the good faith of corporations like Sun to leave their IP open to us.
> Another interesting comment made was that Linux would not succeed until
> it came up with a better GUI. I though, "a better GUI"? What, have they
> not seen Fluxbox? ;-)
Ahh, but 'better' is in the eye of the beholder. :) And what does
'succeed' mean in this context, anyway? I think Linux is already a
roaring success. I expect it will be controlling a large percentage of
the worlds most powerful computer systems in the years to come. Where's
Microsoft in the supercomputing field, anyway?
--Levi
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