Vanderbilt and the Yeggman. Vipers. Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder.

What happens in practice (in English, at least) is that people bring out codified rules (dictionaries, usage guides, etc) in regular editions every few years, attempting to sweep up the changes in rules that have become generally accepted since the previous edition. It is an inexact science of course, with lots of judgement calls required, but the beauty of it is that anything which is sufficiently out of whack with what people are actually doing automatically obsoletes itself.

French is a bit different (and Dutch, from what mrlloyd says below) in that rather than a bunch of independent and competing dictionaries etc, the govt declared the rules and rarely admits modifications. But in France this has pretty much had the effect you describe in your last bullet.