Industry standards were done back then because customers demanded it. When a large customer (big company or government) says that you have to support a standard you support it, and if you don't like it you make the standard better. Even then everyone wanted their own version that wasn't standard because nobody wants you to be able to buy from competition. In turn, sometimes competition reversed engineered you - suddenly you realized you couldn't upgrade anymore unless you were compatible with the competition because customers were expecting compatibility with someone who only partially understands what you did: a few standards were written just so they could explain why this field that was always zero was going to change to a 1 with the next upgrade.