A de facto standard is a standard (formal or informal) that has achieved a dominant and accepted position. It is usually a product, process, system, or technical standard that has achieved status informally by public acceptance, market forces (such as early entrance to the market), and has persisted by tradition.

In social sciences, a de facto standard is a usual solution to a coordination problem.¹ The choice of a de facto standard is the better choice for situations in which all parties can realize mutual gains, but only by making mutually consistent decisions.¹

Other types of standards include voluntary consensus technical standards (which are developed by standards organizations), legally binding (or de jure) standards published or required by a governmental body, and mandatory standards developed or chosen by an independent organization or corporation.²

Examples

• When VHS format for videotape recording was introduced, other formats were available. Many believed that the rival Beta system was superior from a technical point of view. However, the VHS format won the format war due to superior marketing tactics by its proponents. The market could not support two competing formats, so Beta was withdrawn.
• Computer file formats
  • Portable Document Format (PDF) was first published in 1993 by Adobe. Adobe internal standards were part of its software quality systems, but they were neither published nor coordinated by a standards body. With the Acrobat Reader program available for free, and continued support of the format, PDF eventually became the de facto standard for printable web documents and e-books. In 2005, PDF/A became a de jure standard as ISO 19005-1:2005.³. As of 2007^[update], PDF 1.7 is under development as ISO/DIS 32000.⁴⁵
• The driver's seat side in a country
• The 12.7 mm spacing of the rollers in a bicycle chain
• Masculine buttonholes on left, buttons on right; feminine vice-versa
• AA battery
• The QWERTY system was one of several options for the layout of letters on a typewriter (later keyboard) keys. It became a de facto standard because, once people learned the QWERTY layout, they did not want to re-learn a different system.
• The IBM PC format which used MS-DOS and MS Windows operating systems gained a large share of the personal computer market, despite some technical deficiencies and other viable alternatives being available. There is a formal technical standard for Windows written by Microsoft to document their software development and production, but its status as a de facto standard has to do with customer acceptance and market dominance.
• The RⁿRS standard is the de facto standard for the programming language Scheme.

See also

• De facto
• Free market

References