Editing John F. Sowa (section)

==={{anchor|law of standards}}Sowa's law of standards===
In 1991, Sowa first stated his ''Law of Standards'': 
: "Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official [[Technical standard|standard]] for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a [[de facto]] standard for X."<ref>[http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/standard.htm Law of Standards]</ref> 
Like [[Gall's law]], The Law of Standards is essentially an argument in favour of underspecification. Examples include:

*The introduction of [[PL/I]] resulting in [[COBOL]] and [[FORTRAN]] becoming the de facto standards for business and [[scientific programming language|scientific programming]] respectively
*The introduction of [[Algol-68]] resulting in [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] becoming the de facto standard for academic programming
*The introduction of the [[Ada (programming language)|Ada language]] resulting in [[C (programming language)|C]] becoming the de facto standard for [[United States Department of Defense|US Department of Defense]] programming
*The introduction of [[OS/2]] resulting in [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] becoming the de facto standard for [[desktop OS]]
*The introduction of [[X.400]] resulting in [[SMTP]] becoming the de facto standard for [[electronic mail]]
*The introduction of [[X.500]] resulting in [[LDAP]] becoming the de facto standard for [[directory services]]