Comments on the ever changing 3D file format ?standards?

These ?standards? seem to change every three to five years 8^(.
Although these file format standards are developed independent
of the software applications (apps), the app developers tend to
honor the latest and greatest formats and ignore the older formats.
The objective is to promote development of newer more useful apps
that use file formats that include new features. However if standards
are changed too often, this can also inhibit development. So how often
is it reasonable to change the standard? Developing standards suggest
that user community can rely on that standard not changing for some
reasonable period of time. So what is reasonable? From my experience,
if the standard changes every five years, the time to "retool" my web
page content is excessive and discourages me from development.
In my case it took me over six months to create new VRML-2 files
of my second and fourth order tensor glyphs. No doubt VRML-2 is
better than VRML-1 and X3D has even more useful features.
But how useful is it for me, the content creator, to change my apps
that generate 3D glyphs every three to five years? Is it possible
that newer standards could at least honor the previous file format?
File format converters are problematic and do not solve the problem.

Ron Kriz