De facto standard

Icon converted into standard de facto, which points to the presence of a syndication channel.

A de facto standard is that pattern or norm that is characterized by not having been agreed upon or legitimized by a standardization body for that purpose. Rather, it is a generally accepted standard that is widely used on the initiative of a large number of stakeholders.

De facto standards are the antithesis of de iure standards. However, some de facto standards end up deriving into de iure standards. There are also de jure standards that, due to their wide acceptance, can be considered de facto standards. On many occasions, de facto standards prevail over de iure standards for the same purpose. This is due to several reasons:

• Iure standards are based on a slow bureaucratic structure that reacts with difficulty to market changes.
• To access a published iure standard you need to disburse a considerable amount of money. This is a problem for small and medium-sized enterprises that want to develop products.
• Iure standards often lead to a mere compromise agreement to curb the belligerent of strong competition manufacturers. So they don't solve the real need the market demands.

The de facto standards have a special importance in the field of technological innovations and information technology.

Origins of de facto standards

De facto standards often originate from the broad market acceptance of a particular commercial product. It occurs when a manufacturer introduces an innovation that makes the existence of the product unthinkable (for its consumers) without said innovation. So this is imitated by absolutely all manufacturers on the market. Therefore, a de facto standard requires broad acceptance by all consumers and a rejection of products that do not incorporate such a standard.

Another possible origin of de facto standards are industry agreements, where a consortium or group of manufacturers decide to agree to incorporate common and agreed characteristics into their products. products. These agreements are often beneficial to the consumer as they facilitate interoperability and the substitution of one product for another. This results in the same situation of wide acceptance of the previous case.

Examples

In the following list are well-known and illustrative examples of "de facto" and "de iure", according to the cause of its consolidation:

Because of its antiquity or tradition

These standards have been consolidated as de facto due to the antiquity of their knowledge, or due to the tradition of use that has been given to them over a long period of time.

• The QWERTY keyboard format, which does not respond to any logical or natural configuration but to technical requirements of the old writing machines.
• The encoding of ASCII characters, standardized until 1963, is still used today. Usually these files carry the TXT extension.
• The MP3 audio owner format was created as an alternative to the WAV CD, for the distribution of music on the Internet. It is currently supported by most music players and audio programs.
• The keys and the layout of the numbers on the phone keyboards.
• The colors of the ophthal applications.
• The meaning of icons found in hotels and airports.
• The amounts of food sale, for example: the dozens of eggs, are sold in 12 units or half, half dozens.
• The division of land emerging on continents.

For its efficiency, reliability or portability

• The TCP/IP protocols that have given rise to the Internet.
• IEEE 802.3 Local Area Networks. Standard example de facto converted into iure standard.
• The RSS syndication format, which is used in blogs and news portals.
• The marking format for HTML web pages, initially declared standard by IETF, and later by W3C.
• The PDF document format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, and currently derived the ISO 19005-1:2005 standard called PDF/A, to regulate the format. PDF files can be opened using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

For its acceptance in the market or low cost

• MIDI interfaces of electronic musical instruments.
• The 3.5mm jack port used for headphone and horn connectors is very used for its size and portability.

Due to the consolidation or monopolization of a company in the sector

• DOC owner format, converted into standard de facto by the large market share of the Microsoft Office Ophthalm Suite, is supported by most of the Ophthalm Suites, applying reverse engineering on the format, as its specification is secret.
• The standard Office Open XML format, currently used by Microsoft, and declared standard by ISO/IEC 29500:2008, although there is an already established standard called Oasis OpenDocument in 2006.
• The IBM PC architecture over others, such as the Commodore Amiga or the Macintosh due to its great impact on modern computer science, and its low cost.
• The Intel x86 processor architecture on others such as SPARC, 68000, MIPS or PowerPC, related to the previous point, because it was included with the PC IBM, which had a very wide acceptance.

For the result of a war of formats or products

• Blu-ray disc support on HD-DVD
• The VHS video tape format on Betamax format. Although Betamax was a technically superior format, it turned out to be generally accepted, due to the massive publicity and acceptance it had among the public. See (War of video tape formats).
• The Internet Explorer web browser on Netscape Navigator, because it was pre-installed on Windows systems.
• The ARJ and LHA compression formats by ZIP and RAR, compression formats of the MS-DOS era, which were falling into disuse due to the lack of a graphical interface for Windows.