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AndrewWatt2000@aol.com writes:
> If one looks at W3C in organisational / procedural terms the "let's
> create many new organisms and hope that some survive" evolutionary
> approach seems to me to be inherently inefficient. Some of the
> relayering I perceive as necessary is a result of that approach.
I think that the problem is deeper, both in the W3C and in OASIS.
Standardization should normally be the last stage of technological
development; it's *not* the same as project planning:
Right:
"X is has been a very common technology for several years, but
people have a lot of slightly incompatible ways of doing it; let's
see if we can get many people do it the same way so that we can
all save time and money."
Wrong:
"Let's write a standard now, based on our predictions of what people
might be doing in five years, so that we don't have to go through
the hassle of getting everyone to agree later."
Nobody is smart enough to write good standards without a lot of
implementation history to draw on (successful and failed).
Occasionally people do write a useful standard in advance, but that's
a lucky accident, like winning a lottery. You don't even know that
something is *worth* standardizing in advance.
All the best,
David
--
David Megginson, david@megginson.com, http://www.megginson.com/
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