xml-dev - sunshine and standards development

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 08:28 AM 10/14/00 -0400, Jonathan.Robie@SoftwareAG-USA.com wrote: 
>
> The United Nations does not make all of its internal correspondence
available
> to the general public either. Nor do most charitable institutions, or most
> corporations. If a corporation brings in an external group to perform an
> audit, it is not usually a public mailing list. You imply that
confidentially
> is inherently evil. I just don't believe that.


I suggest that confidentiality is an unfortunate burden carried by a technical
decision-making body whose development processes affect millions of developers
- Web developers, XML developers, and various other folks.  (I could count
users of W3C-influenced products, but I think we know how large that number
is.)

The W3C is neither a charity nor a corporation.  Effectively, the W3C is the
legislature of the Web, drafting laws that its members and others should
follow.  It is, of course, hobbled by lack of a court system and has only a
tiny executive, but it does have law-making powers that affect far more than
its members.  

While many legislatures do have occasional executive sessions, much work is
done with the public in the room - it's generally considered a hallmark of
good
government, and not just in the US.  (Even the UN is opening up more and
more.)

The W3C is presently accountable only to its members, who represent a tiny
share of the people using its specs.  While I'm very grateful that W3C public
documents are published without licensing or reproduction restrictions, I
continue to find it troubling that these influential documents are controlled
by a vendor consortium with strict confidentiality rules and pay-to-play
limits
on participation.  (Enough about the back door already.)

It may just be that I have paranoid delusions or that I hang out with too many
disgruntled folks at conferences.  Unfortunately, problems with the W3C
decision-making process appear to be quite real (even recurring), and there
appears to be no way of addressing them given the current structures and
process.

>
> All W3C standards are published for public review before they proceed to
> become recommendations, and this public review is taken seriously. The
W3C is
> also quite interested in promoting open source implementations. I think that
> it is very important to have our technical content reviewed.


Allowing the public to post comments to a message board is not exactly a great
way to include large numbers of people in the process or encourage them to
write open source software, even if the carrot/burden of Invited Expert status
is available.  At least the WGs have begun cataloging comments and replying to
them, a very welcome change from fairly recent practice.

Opening doors is difficult, and I certainly recognize that.  At the same time,
it's hard to justify what looks from the outside like a deeply-held desire to
shroud the decision-making process from the larger public it affects.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books