Re: Home for independent open specifications (was: Collected Works ofSAX)

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

At 4:14 PM +0200 7/21/01, Eric van der Vlist wrote:


>How valuable and useful this goal might be for the industry, as an
>independent developer, I don't feel comfortable under the shadow of the
>big sponsors of industry consortiums and I think that a home for
>independent open specifications is a need that hasn't been met yet.
>

How about the IETF? It's got a great track record of producing interoperable, public specifications. Furthermore, its process pretty closely matches that which produced SAX1 and SAX2. (i.e. anybody informed, interested, and intelligent enough to know that the development of the standard is occurring is welcome to participate).  It's got one colossal failure to its credit (HTML) which led to the creation of the IETF, but assuming we're not venturing into as politically charged an arena as HTML and that everyone is willing to act in good faith, and trust that everyone else is acting in good faith, the IETF process works quite well with a minimum of bureaucratic hassle. 
-- 

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