In practice that does not work. Things get broken, people end up having to support 20 edge cases to use this "universal", "standardized" thing. Depends on the implementation, though.
"HTML 1.0" was the particular standard I had in mind. I guess I'm too used to coding multiplatform Javascript, but "end[ing] up having to support 20 edge cases to use this 'universal', 'standardized' thing" sounds like success in my books--in that you now have a (painfully) interoperating ecosystem, where before you had none. And it all gradually gets smoothed out as the spec evolves over the years, until you can't really tell the difference from a BDUF spec.
