I don't agree. You make the argument that standards impede innovation. However, in a standardized industry, new companies find it easier to enter the marketspace. For example, look at the Office productivity space. Since Microsoft creates its own file formats and there are no public standards; new companies have a hard time. Wouldn't they be happier to just support a public standard, and spend their time in adding innovative functionality rather than worrying how to write and read files correctly?

Since there is no standard in the industry for text file reading or text compression, u have so many readers that are available which may use different more innovative algorithms to compress the data u hv pdf, djvu u have other readers like foxit following the pdf format and since there is no industry standard but just something that is very popular, most companies just follow the office format as a standard but it is not binding on them if they think something is better than this tomorrow then hey presto .. u install and run it no binding that all text files will have to be compressed like this ... or anythign of that sort

Hmm.... ok.. I'm convinced!