Need For Standards

Seeing me crib for lack of standards or sometimes more of them, a friend, who is not a software professional, asked me to justify my anguish. I started with the whole set of arguments, and he mentioned that he carried his laptop around the world, used a lot of documents and till now Microsoft Office had been pretty good for him. I assume many feel the same way. And entering into the whole new OOXML v/s ODF arguments was not going to work, he really did not worry about the technical details.

Well, what worked was using the non-software world to explain it. During the discussion he mentioned that it was a real pain to carry around the plug adaptor since every country had their own shapes. Of course! I asked him would it not be great if there was a common shape. It would reduce quite a lot of baggage considering most of the international travellers carry a laptop. The common shape would enhance interoperability. He agreed.

Now consider that every country also has its own voltage specifications. This causes a requirement of some kind of transformer in between that adapts the voltage. If the voltage was common too, it would further reduce the baggage and I assume cost too.

After this he shuddered to imagine a world where laptops from only a specific vendor would work with a specific voltage and shape, that is every vendor came up with their own specifications and changed them at their whims and fancies so that they could sell their own electrical peripherals too. He said that would almost kill the whole electricity distribution. Exactly!

Now, I do not know the reasons for difference in the voltage and plug shapes. From what I know the existing distribution system impose these restrictions and it is quite an overhaul to change them. However, I know enough of software to know where standards would work. Or where vendors promote proprietary ways to benefit their business at our cost. It is better to earn through merit and providing convenience to the users.

Now that my friend could understand my rants, he said he will think about standards that his company adopts. He understood that if they are already spending money, it is better if they spend it on standards-compliant software. Standards do make our lives easy. Exactly!