xml-dev - RE: sunshine and standards development

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Or it could results in investors becoming 
more savvy and cautious.  As the dotCons 
burn out, the money evaporates, and people 
look for a culprit, at some point, they 
may find that between them and a voracious 
press, they saw what they wanted to see 
and invested in that.

Openness is rarely wrong if the public 
interest is at issue.

Len Bullard
Intergraph Public Safety
clbullar@ingr.com
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Bohlman [mailto:ebohlman@earthlink.net]

One of the problems here is that many of the W3C members are publicly-traded

corporations, which means that published comments by their representatives 
have the potential to influence their companies' stock prices.  Fully
opening 
up the process would actually stifle creativity because those WG members who

represented publicly-traded companies would have to carefully consider every

single statement they were to make from an investor-relations point of view,

and would likely be under orders from top management to get clearance for 
anything of substance.  The result at best would be the injection of huge 
amounts of vapor into their submissions, and at worst would be companies 
withdrawing from the W3C process and not cooperating.  It's unpleasant that 
things have to be this way, but it's an example of the law of unintended 
consequences; what would appear to be an opening-up of the process would 
actually result in much of the membership becoming more close-mouthed and 
secretive.