Re: DoD and NIST undermining commercial CASE industry

[saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!new s.sei.cmu.edu!firth@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Robert Firth)]

In article <ByM75t.2s6@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
 writes:

>    A major CASE standards effort became rancorous in recent weeks as vendors,
>government officials and commercial users leveled charges of favoritism and
>commercial bias at one another.  At stake, both size said, is the long term
>viability of the US computer aided software engineering (CASE) industry.

No, the US CASE industry is showing the same insularity and xenophobia
that destroyed the US automobile industry.

PCTE will be the CASE standard everywhere in the world except the US,
and none of US industry's paid lobbyists and trained seals can change
that.  The effect of the US adopting an incompatible standard will be
to shut US companies off from a large, fast-growing global market,
and give them a small, slower-growing local market as their private
oligopoly.  It will be the equivalent of a tariff wall blocking the
import of software.

And the result will be the same as always: higher prices, lower quality,
and the inexorable decay of another industry artificially shielded from
competition.  If anyone in the US software industry believes that they
can get away with thinking locally rather than globally, they are in
the wrong business.  They should move to France and grow artichokes.