Economist.com: The fortune of the commons

"...railways, electricity, cars and telecommunications all learned to love standards as they came of age. At a certain point in their history, it became clear that rather than just fighting to get the largest piece of the pie, the companies within a sector needed to work together to make the pie bigger. Without standards, a technology cannot become ubiquitous, particularly when it is part of a larger network....Today, the IT industry is finally getting the standards religion."