[thesuperbigfrog]

>> Standards are necessary and help of course. But the real power always lies with the implementations. There is no compliance without enforcement.

You are correct.

Compliance depends on the implementation developer / maintainer. If the standard exists and is agreed upon, at least users can petition the implementation developer / maintainer and say "Your implementation does not conform to section 3, paragraph 2, line 1 of the standard. The expected behavior is X, but your implementation does Y. Please fix it."

If a standard does not exist, then who is to say what the correct behavior should be?

If there is a standard, but no one follows it, then perhaps the standard needs to be adjusted. (Why is the standard not being followed? Were bad ideas standardized? Did the standards committee follow after one vendor's implementation to the detriment of other vendors' implementations? etc.)