Standards or diversity? Monoculture or fragmentation?

Diversity is good. New ideas, healthy competition, consumer choice, freedom to
innovate, improved security…these
are all good. So goes the common refrain.

Standards
are
good
too.
Interoperability, level playing field, common goals, low barrier to entry,
preventing market fragmentation…these are all good. So goes the common
refrain.

One definition of insanity is holding contradictory beliefs without
acknowledging the contradiction. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can blame the
crazies here. Both of these ideas are too widely accepted. Which one is right?

Or is this a false dichotomy? Is it more like free market capitalism and
government regulation, both possible at the same time, both valuable and
complementary?

That may work for economics, but it’s not so clear for software, as shown by
troubled platform standards like OpenGL and
POSIX. I’ve mentioned this to a few
friends in the industry, and they’ve generally seen it as a choice between
evils, not complementary ideas or mutually exclusive virtues. They were evenly
split on the final choice, too, so no help there.

Of course, in practice things are rarely black and white. As the classic joke
goes, “Standards are great, there are so many to choose from!” Similarly, most
monocultures aren’t actually that homogenous. Right now there are
three distinct versions of Windows with significant market share,
and that’s before you take into account different service packs, patches, and
versions of IE.

Diversity isn’t much better at staying diverse. Evolution and free markets may
support diversity, but they strongly favor winners. Mature industries often end
up with only three major players with 50%, 35%, and 15% market share each.
What’s more, forces such as
globalization,
network effects,
and
selection for uniformity
can result in
a single player dominating heavily.
(It’s
not even clear that diversity helps security,
but that’s a tangent.)

Anyway, enough muddying the water. Can we have the benefits of both standards
and diversity? If not, which should we prefer? I don’t know the answer, but I’m
definitely curious.