[link|http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/03/15/clay_interop.html|Heresy!]

Excerpts:

Even if at this point, P2P were a crystal-clear definition --within which it was clear which sub-groups should be adopting standards -- premature standardization risks destroying meaningful work.

This is the biggest single risk with premature standardization -- the loss of that critical period of conceptualization and testing that any protocol should undergo before it is declared superior to its competitors. It's tempting to believe that standards are good simply because they are standard, but to have a good standard, you first need a good protocol, and to have a good protocol, you need to test it in real-world conditions...

Premature standardization is a special case of premature optimization, the root of all evil, and in many cases standardization will have to wait until something more organic happens: interoperability.

Standardization requires group definition -- interoperability can proceed with just a handshake between two teams or even two individuals -- and by allowing this kind of pairwise cooperation, interoperability is more peer-to-peer in spirit than standardization is. By growing out of a shared conversation, two projects can pursue their own design goals, while working out between themselves only those aspects of interoperability both consider important.