A cynical observer from the data exchange world would observe that the
most common vendor excuses for not supporting an international standard
are that "the standard does not provide all of the functionality of our
system", and, "we promote xxx as an open standard", where xxx is a
format owned by the vendor. (01)
The aerospace industry, like many other product based industries, relies
on a network of supply chains, where every prime uses many suppliers and
every supplier supplies many primes. Moreover, these supply chains
persist over the life of the product - up to seventy years for an
aircraft. Consequently, to exchange data either everyone in the
aerospace world standardizes on one version of one product, and never
buys a new one, or we exchange data through standards. (02)
Where they exist, we can get a large chunk of the functionality we need
through standards, and the cost of point to point interoperability for
the extra few percent of vendor specific stuff is actually quite high.
However once we have made an investment, we don't want it destroyed by
"improvements" that may wreck interoperability, particularly since for
vendors
the interoperability horizon may be as little as the version before
last. (03)
Consequently, we like open standards, even at the cost of reduced
functionality, where "open" means that the change control process is
publicly controlled. That way we get to influence the development of the
standard, if only by reminding people about the compatibility issues. (04)
Adobe has put its formats into the ISO arena. Consequently, it is seen
as a credible open format, particularly in the long term data retention
sector. (05)
Sean Barker
Bristol, UK (06)
This mail is publicly posted to a distribution list as part of a process
of public discussion, any automatically generated statements to the
contrary non-withstanding. It is the opinion of the author, and does not
represent an official company view. (07)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
> John F. Sowa
> Sent: 21 October 2007 22:14
> To: rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Free viewer for PowerPoint 2007
>
>
> *** WARNING ***
>
> This mail has originated outside your organization, either
> from an external partner or the Global Internet.
> Keep this in mind if you answer this message.
>
> Rick,
>
> There is nothing wrong, in principle, with a proprietary
> format becoming an open standard -- provided that it's good
> and free of implementation-dependent peculiarities.
>
> > What makes PDF standardization different ?
>
> PDF is based on Postscript, which was developed by Adobe.
> But Postscript is a fairly clean language that is not
> dependent on features of Adobe's implementation. Many
> implementers, including OpenOffice and commercial companies
> other than Adobe, support Postscript.
> (08)
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