Devil's Advocate: Whose standards are they anyway?

In his latest attempt to question ebusiness correctness, Martin Brampton, director at consultancy Black Sheep Research, sets his sights on standards. They're at the heart of IT, but they're not all a force for good...

Standards were important long before IT. In the early days of railway companies, they each made their own decision on the gauge for the railway lines. As the railways spread across the country, it became obvious that a single agreed gauge was needed so trains could run on any line. So, all railways settled on a distance of four feet eight and a half inches between the rails. (Why that particular distance, I wonder?)

Standards in engineering were developed with the same ethos as public science. The startling developments of the twentieth century - quantum theory, the genetic code, antibiotics and so on - were created by scientists who published their work without reservation. The acclaimed geniuses frequently acknowledge their debt to the scientific community and its accumulated literature.

Data communications learned this lesson quickly, and for many years now there have been agreed international standards for most interfaces. Why is it that your modem, from a wide range of possible manufacturers, will connect to the internet anywhere in the world? Of course, it is because it conforms to a public standard.

People sometimes say that IT is different, that it moves too quickly for standards to be imposed. Yet one of the most dynamic developments of recent times has been the internet. It has become a global network precisely because groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have been highly pragmatic standards groups. They have maintained adherence to public standards, while encouraging evolution at a pace that achieved a compromise between rapid innovation and sound practice.

And we have to question the claim that technology moves too quickly. The fastest movers in the opening up of the internet were the dot-coms. Look where most are today. To make a success of things, even when we want to achieve quick results, a certain deliberation is required.

When commercial companies become involved with standards, problems arise. That is not to diminish the valuable work they do to promote standards. But their natural tendency is to use technology to eliminate competition. The idea that innovation is driven by the payback on proprietary standards has to be set against the lost opportunity for unfettered development.

Indeed, much computing technology is based on algorithms that were invented and freely published decades ago. The argument that innovation is driven by financial rewards is undermined by the fact that proprietary software often uses poorer algorithms than those that are in the public domain. And there can be little doubt that freely available algorithms have speeded IT developments.

Once public standards are in place, we never think of going back. We would hardly have agreed to Railtrack restoring its finances by changing the gauge of the railways, then charging a fee for each new coach that was built using the new Railtrack patent gauge.

Personally, I worry about my old Nokia Communicator. It is about time it was upgraded. Sadly, there is no general agreement on standards for the information it holds. Yes, there is Vcard and Vcalendar, but adherence is very patchy. If only every PDA and every desktop contacts program offered a standard interface. Then I could upgrade with confidence that my data would be preserved or even enhanced.

Indeed, I worry about our general lock-in to proprietary IT standards. As the US economy plunges from the fanciful levels of the late twentieth century, it becomes ever clearer that computers have not solved our every problem. There remains huge scope for innovation. And proprietary standards are holding it back.

** Martin Brampton is a director and founder of Black Sheep Research (http://www.black-sheep-research.co.uk ), an independent consultancy providing research, writing and speaking services on a wide range of business and technology subjects. Martin was previously a director at Bloor Research, and has worked with IT as a user and analyst for over 20 years. He is a frequent contributor to silicon.com's weekly Behind the Headlines TV programme and can be contacted at silicon@black-sheep-research.co.uk.