Originally Posted by mayonaise

where am i blaming anything? i'm not blaming open standards either, i'm just saying that there are problems with them. it's not necessarily the fault of the standard or the creators, but there *are* problems. how is this example in particular not a problem? because of their open nature, the formats are left open to these kind of situations. if there were some international law that would levy fines or require jail time for breaking standards, then i would be all for it. but at this point, the fact that they cannot be enforced in any way, shape or form is a problem. anyone (like microsoft) can come along and crap all over it, and as we've seen with HTML, CSS and Javascript, the world could very easily accept it. this is a problem, is it not? again, i'm not trying to blame the standards or their creators or anything like that - i'm just saying, it's not perfect.

there are arguments to both sides of the open-standards debate, and neither is 100% right or 100% wrong. i agree that open standards are a good thing, but there are still issues with the concept in general.