One of the more interesting things about 3D printing is that it is igniting this sort of issue. A long time ago (like 1991) I was a working for Sun and representing them at the "CAD Framework Initiative" efforts or CFI. The express goal of this was to create a set of interchange formats for CAD tools so that you could move things from one system to another, you could store and diff changes, and even if your vendor went out of business you could use your designs in another vendor's tool if it was CFI compliant.
Now the irritating part was that Apollo Computer turned it into a DCE RPC vs ONC RPC thing when the committee started leaning toward the simpler RPC/XDR format that Sun had offered. The criminal part was that as soon as it became clear that the group was actually going to succeed nearly all support was yanked. The simple reality was that CAD tools cost literally hundreds of thousands of dollars for a large shop and those vendors desperately needed the 'lock in' effect of a propietary data format and tool chain to keep themselves in play during the inevitable periods where their tools totally sucked (waterfall development at its finest). It still bugs me when I think about it over 20 years later!
So to say I would be a huge supporter of an open CAD standard is an understatement. And now that there is a fairly large body of people who are both code capable and desirous of such a standard in order to create, share, and modify 3D designs, there might be enough energy to make it happen.