From the Laboratory: Closed Standards
May 27th, 2008Closed standards are an oxymoron and any standard that is closed is moronic.
This is going to be a rant, so bear with me….
How can you call anything a standard when you don’t make the standard readily available? What is the point of a standard that no one can implement? Unfortunately, many ’standardized’ audio and video codecs are encumbered by patents, trademarks, and obscenely expensive reference documents. Surprise, surprise, but many of the telco standards bodies are the worst offenders! (As an aside, the movie people, thanks to MPEG, seem to be somewhat more sensible).