Have a look at the ongoing battles between MPEG4 and Ogg for the  
browser video space. I don't know of your second criteria for b),  
however - not many people are using Ogg (yet)

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/07/06/ogg-theora-h-264-and-the-html-5-browser-squabble/

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5-video-codec-debate.ars

-Andrew

On 13-Jul-09, at 12:22 PM, Walter Lewis wrote:

> Are there any blindingly obvious examples of instances where
>    a) a standards group produced a standard published by a body  
> which charged for access to it
> and
>   b) a alternative standards groups produced a competing standard  
> that was openly accessible
> and the work of group a) was rendered totally irrelevant because  
> most non-commercial work ignored it in favour of b).
>
> My instinct is to quote the battle between OSI (ISO) and TCP/IP  
> (IETF RFCs).  Does that strike others as appropriate?
>
> Any examples closer to the library world?
>
> Walter Lewis