Hi, Bill,

Thanks for your input.  The only issue I really take with what you said
is that a standard cannot be proprietary.  Like Mike said in his last
email, a standard CAN be proprietary.

Yes, some of the Microsoft standards keep changing (VB 7 will soon come
out, for example).  If you read my report from Tech Ed 2000, you'll find
this
quote from Bill Gates' book, "Business @ The Speed of Thought":
  "If the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s were about
reengineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity.  About how quickly
the nature of business will change.  About how quickly business itself
will be transacted.  About how information access will alter the lifestyle
of consumers and their expectations of business.  Quality improvements and
business process improvements will occur far faster.  When the increase
in velocity of business is great enough, the very nature of business
changes.  A manufacturer or retailer that responds to changes in sales in
hours
instead of weeks is no longer at heart a product company, but a service
company that has a product offering."

We can expect, and have already observed, rapidly changing standards.  The
growth
of our technology is exponential, and the conventional, IEEE/ISO-oriented
5-year
standards lifecycle simply does not make sense in some situations now.

Rick
====================================
Richard Conn, Principal Investigator
Reuse Tapestry


-----Original Message-----
From: Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Bill Greene
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 9:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Leveraging MicroSoft's Marketing


Richard Conn wrote:
>
> By the way, Mike, all of these definitions are correct.
> Saying they are not is like saying the 50+ definitions of
> "green" are not correct and we should choose one.
> ...
> [said Rick]
> >
> > I think it depends upon how you choose to use the term.
> > There are ISO and IEEE standards.  There are industry standards.
> > There are "defacto" standards.  There are organization standards.

If someone alleges that Microsoft has disregarded (for example) elements
of the C++ (formal) "standard," then to answer that Microsoft Visual C++
is itself a (defacto/proprietary) "standard" does not seem like much of
a response.  The fact that Microsoft dominates the desktop industry does
not mean that it's impossible to write portable code, but it is more
difficult without standards, and I don't mean proprietary "standards."

Speaking only for myself, when I hear of a new "standard," I expect
documentation of the standard to be available, the standard itself to be
supported and implemented by more than one organization, but not owned
by any one of them.  Visual Basic or Java are not standards in this
sense, since they are intellectual property of their respective
corporations.  Windows, for example, is whatever Microsoft says it is,
and they keep changing their story.

--
William R. Greene                              1100 Perimeter Park Drive
NetIQ, formerly Ganymede Software                              Suite 104
http://www.ganymede.com                       Morrisville, NC  27560 USA
Phone: (919) 469-0997, ext. 280                      Fax: (919) 469-5553