Standards are supposed to be ‘boring’ and formalized but once in a while, we get some very colourful language. The Adobe – Apple debate has been getting a lot of coverage but last week, we reached new heights when Opera joined in the debate and said:

“At Opera we say that the future of the web is open web standards and Flash is not an open web standards technology.”
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In April, Talkstandards.com hosted an open forum on the topic of formal review/ranking of Standard Setting Organisations (SSO). Contributors were asked to discuss whether such review/ranking of SSOs would foster or impede efficient standardization?

Ajit Jaokar argued that any “standards for standards” effort risked the creation of a “class system between consortia” based on an arbitrary set of criteria and will only be more difficult to apply as new innovation becomes increasingly cross-domain (e-health, Mobile health, etc).

Helen Disney, arguing that the priority of an SSO should be promotion of both competition and innovation, identified the criticism that formal review creates more bureaucracy within the standard setting organisations and as such may slow change in dynamic markets such as the IT sector.
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The crux and, indeed, the most challenging aspect of standards creation is the ability of different standards to promote both competition and innovation. Today there are many different approaches to setting standards, including de facto standards set informally through the market and formal standards established by governments or standard setting organisations (SSOs). There are also standards involving proprietary efforts and those based on collaborative or open efforts.
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