RE: Why 90 percent of XML standards will fail

[Frank Richards <frichards@softquad.com>]

I agree with your point, but find disingenuous a little strong. If nothing
else there's a nice ring to the hierarchy:

The ISO and it's ilk, blessed by law and treaty come up with legalistic (and
legal) 'standards'.

The corporations of the w3c come up with (hopefully) comprehensive, well
defined, but 'make it work' oriented 'recommendations'.

And the IETF, open to anyone who will work, generates 'Requests for comment'
by 'rough consensus and running code.'

Frank

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo@metalab.unc.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 11:44 AM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: RE: Why 90 percent of XML standards will fail
>
>
> I quite deliberately pollute that word. I consider the W3C's use of
> "Recommmendation" instead of "Standard" to be disingenuous. The W3C
> publishes standards for all practical intents and purposes. The
> technical details of why they're not called standards (which change
> depending on who you're talking to) should all be resolved  by
> changing the process to make them legal standards; not by being
> satisfied with de facto standards and de jure "recommendations".
> --