It Can't Be Said Better - Eh... XV?

Every now and then somebody says something in so pithy a way that it can't be said better. Today's topic is IEEE standards:

A proprietary undocumented text format as the de facto standard -- and that's what .doc is -- is a shame for all parties involved. It's like using a special patented ink that can only be read with special patented sun glasses. Who would want to use that for all their scientific, private and business documents? Probably nobody. Why they do so with computers is beyond me.

Mathias Ettrick, The KDE Man