In addition to its general, industry-wide economic benefits, the adoption of a protocol also brings a unique set of benefits to its developer. These benefits consist of name recognition, and first-mover advantages in terms of development and sales of services and products based on the protocol. There may also be other significant benefits, such as those resulting from ownership of software patents related to the protocol.
These benefits can result in a huge financial windfall for the protocol developer. For this reason, the developer has an enormous vested interest in the adoption of his protocol in preference to any others. And this may lead the developer to promote his protocol in ways which subvert the free and fair competitive process among protocols. One of the ways a business may do this is by seeking to exert inappropriate influence or control over the activities of standards organizations. In particular, the developer may seek to have his protocol labelled as a ``standard,'' while denying this label to other protocols. Alternatively, a business or group of businesses may form their own ``standards organization'' as an exclusive promotional vehicle for their own protocol. In either case the standards organization is in effect in the pocket of Big Business, and their discriminatory labelling of their own protocol as a ``standard'' represents another form of corruption. Though this serves the self-interest of the developer, it is likely to cause the industry to adopt the ``wrong'' protocol - i.e. not the one that best serves its overall needs. This is enormously detrimental to the industry at large and the consumer.
The incentives for businesses to indulge in these underhanded tactics is in direct proportion to the size of the industry and the financial stakes. And in the wireless data communications industry, the stakes are very high indeed.
As a result of this, we are currently seeing an enormous amount of standards-related activity in the wireless arena. Since 1998 a large number of self-proclaimed standards organizations relating to wireless data have been created, are claiming legitimacy, and are attempting to impose their own protocols on the industry. Among these recently-formed groups are:
Each of these organizations is an independent entity, with its own claim of legitimacy, its own protocol publication mechanism, and its own set of restrictions and limitations on participation. Beyond the realm of specific wireless subnetworks, there is no reasonable need for this large number of independent standards organizations.
Many of these organizations are simply an instrument of Big Business. They are the result of a group of businesses forming an industry association or forum, for the purpose of branding their own protocol as a ``standard.''
At best, this labelling of some protocols but not others as ``standards'' is meaningless; it is a semantic shell game. And at worst, this labelling is an attempt by Big Business to market one set of protocols in competition with another. Marketing has its place in the promotion of a company's own products and services. But an industry protocol represents a public trust, and business marketing has no place in this arena.
We believe that the ultimate criterion of the legitimacy of a protocol is its acceptance and usage in the industry at large. And the industry at large is entirely capable of establishing its own winners and losers by means of free and fair competition among protocols. This arbitrary standards labelling serves only to corrupt this competitive process.
Our philosophy regarding protocol development requires only that the developer make sure that he adheres to the basic trilogy of principles described above. Beyond that, free and fair competition will do the rest.
By making it clear that these self-promoting consortia have no genuine legitimacy, we seek to reduce their influence and the harm they do to the industry.