Standards (software)

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Software standards enable software to interoperate. Many things are (somewhat) arbitrary, so the important thing is that everyone agree on what they are. Software standards are one of the unsolved problems in software engineering. There are multiple reasons behind software standards:

Safety reason for software standard to-do: Economic reason for software standard to-do: put economic reasons here

Social reason for software standard to-do: put social reasons here

Incorrect implementation of standards or specifications by multiple organizations result in a requirement for implementation specific code and special case exceptions as a necessity for cross-platform interoperability. Notable modern examples include web browser compatibility and web-services interoperability. The arbitrariness of most software concepts, which is related to historical hardware and software implementation, lack of common standards worldwide, and economic pressures.

Sometimes software standards are controlled by private corporations (the Windows GUI interface is owned by Microsoft). Sometimes software standards are controlled by open, public, or non-profit organizations (the Secure Shell 2 protocol is 'owned' by the IETF).