When do Standards become Standards ?

I want to promote good sense when I read it. Adam Bosworth has a very good article on standards. He is not talking about EDI standards, but technical and software standards in general. Yet everything he says I feel is applicable to EDI.

In summary, standards should be simple, readable, focused, precise, implemented, forgiving and free.

Adam's standards background is ODBC, AJAX and XML. These technologies are used so computer can talk to computer, servers and clients can talk to clients and servers, so Electronic Data can be... Interchanged.