Recent papers in the literature have proposed a universal authoring system. While these papers are valuable because they stimulated debate and provided a baseline, pursuing a universal authoring system at this time is a search for a solution before the requirements and problems have been clearly identified. This paper explores several issues related to the concept of a universal authoring system and concludes with an alternative prescription both for users (customers) and vendors. The user prescription includes a clear definition of requirements and establishment of internal standards. The vendor prescription. includes working with the users more closely to aid in system comparison. This task is very difficult now because of nonstandard criteria used by the scores of vendors involved. A model for a "universal" authoring system is presented to illustrate that the options are endless. Technical issues regarding the computer medium are discussed to illustrate the inherent difficulties of achieving universality of authoring without restricting progress in hardware. The authors agree that the plethora of authoring systems on the market today inhibits courseware portability, but we feel that our free enterprise system as well as more informed consumers will help reduce the number of surviving authoring systems.