I think developers like to declare winners for very, very good reasons typically. Winners are often very useful. For example in settling on a standard once a good or great solution is found so a community can thrive around it, lots of open tools and open code can be built for it, developers can build upon it with a roadmap in mind, sites can publish with it knowing they can reach a maximum audience, etc etc etc etc.
Who really wants to have even a dozen different 'standards' for data interchange? The gradual move from XML to JSON demonstrated perfectly well how messy it can all get, just trying to support two quasi standards.
Choice is a good thing.. do you use a fork, to open doors, eat,scratch your foot, kill flies, start a fire, just because you have to use the one-and-ultimate tool ?
json are not the best for every scenario, as also msgpack does not have the best fitness for everything..
Nature is pretty wise on that matter, it "launch" several possibilities, cause the environment is always changing.. so in a particular giver scenario, one of the possibilities (biological agents) can succed..
but that one that succeded in a particular scenario, will fail in another, where now, another subject who has failed is the better option, adaptation..
so.. choise is a good thing.. why people are so lazy, and dont like to think? everything must be ready..
its our duty to choose the best tool to solve a given problem.. its cool that i can even use something "obsolet" from the 1800´s to solve a 2012 problem..
So if we keep thinking.. "oh that old unwanted thing from the past", we will never see it..
Winners are only winners in a given scenario.. its good to have choice, even against all boards and standards
i prefer to decide from myself, than to have others to do that decision for me..
Thank you for taking the time to write that, instead of linking to that one comic that everyone links to in these threads about competing standards.
Although I'm not sure why you say "quasi" standard. XML and JSON seem like pretty robust standards to me, and they should both be around for a long time.
Who really wants to have even a dozen different 'standards' for data interchange? The gradual move from XML to JSON demonstrated perfectly well how messy it can all get, just trying to support two quasi standards.