Why "pre-standard" gives me the willies

An old vendor trick is to get on the inside track of some standards effort, then ship "pre-standard" versions of their products. I haven't heard the term "pre-standard" since my days of covering SQL for InfoWorld, but in my final IT Conversation from Digital ID World 2004, Bryan Field-Elliot of Ping ID mentions it in relation to SAML 2.0. Just remember that standards can change, and although vendors  often bend over backwards to assure standards compliance down the road, it might be imprudent for customers to build a lot of infrastructure, especially on something as important as identity management, on something that's "pre-standard" -- unless you've done a through assessment of the risks and potential benefits.