Not All Standards Are Created Equal

To paraphrase Orwell, some standards are more equal than others. The conventional wisdom is that open standards are good and closed protocols are bad.

Take for example cars. Today we would be totally intolerant if you bought a car and you could not add new after market parts or indeed change your own oil.But early Rolls Royce cars were closed proprietary systems:

.... in fact, the company depended on that income and it was tenacious in making certain it got 100 percent of it. “It has been said that Rolls-Royce hoods were sealed at the factory,” Mr. Austin said, “so no one else could work on their engines.”

Before World War II, Rolls made its own square-head nuts and bolts. “If a Rolls-Royce technician found a hex-head bolt in the frame or the drivetrain,” Mr. Austin explained, “he would know that someone from outside the company had been working on the car.”

(However I don't think that Rolls Royce owners were particularly concerned).

Openness is openness to a varying degree. There are systems like the iPod/iTunes DRM that exists in order for content to be distributed digitally. Without this compromise, the record companies would not participate. There are other "standards" like Intellisync for Microsoft Exchange. The use and license of this "protocol" strikes me as arbitrary and caprious. Why?, because it doesn't particular add to a body (IMHO) knowledge or innovation. It is designed to allow Microsoft to control the use and exploitation of push based email against Exchange.

Which leads me to my preponderance lately and that is the RT audio codec that Microsoft is using in LCS. Besides the fact that there are some very good wideband codecs that are open and already out there, what is the purpose of using this codec over and above already available open codecs?

And yes I am going to preponder some more.....

• VoIP / Convergence