Although this may seem strange, I...
Although this may seem strange, I believe that open standards generally help companies stay in business. Companies succeed partly by selling outstanding products, if they diminish the usability of those products then they often damage their long-term business (and when they go bust create havoc for their former customers).
Keeping standards closed is often seen as a "competitive advantage", whereas a greater advantage can sometimes be found from delivering outstanding products with excellent usability - because someone else's software makes YOUR product work BETTER!
Open standards unfortunately often need a "mind-set" change in a company, which can take a very long time.
login to post comments
Simon O'Neill – Fri, 2006/02/10 – 6:07am
Simon, everything you say is true - except that it isn't...
Simon, everything you say is true - except that it isn't strange!
Unless a company is a "total system supplier", they need to interwork with other company's products. And the best way of doing that is via standard interfaces (de facto or de jure). (IBM thought they could sustain a position as a "total system supplier". They eventually failed. Even Microsoft have proposals for "open office").
If each company has its own proprietary interfaces, we have a combinatorial problem. There may be (say) 100 cameras with their own raw formats, and (say) 100 products trying to handle those cameras. The risk is that there will be 100 x 100 bits of code or data structures or calibration tests, etc.
But if all the products use a common interface, then we have a 100 cameras working to it, and 100 products working to it - at worst, a "100 + 100" problem, instead of a "100 x 100" problem. And, in fact, the difference is far more extreme than that. There were about 50 extra cameras supported by ACR last year. If "50 cameras per year" continues, the problem will become unbelievably hard in a few years time.
As you say - it requires a mind-set change. I've worked in such a company (not photography) and had to undergo this mind-set change myself. Many people have yet to undergo it.