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I agree with a lot of that and I won't rehash the
history. I saw what I saw, heard what I was heard,
and stand by my statements. Lots of people will
disagree, I know. I don't think Berners-Lee
quite knew what would come of consortia-based
design and some of that has been good, but some
of that is not because it is a model without
regulation other than that applied by dint
of it being a corporation. Even though
good process has emerged by dint of experience,
the basic model of consortia standards remains
one that disenfranchises. It can be one that
manages and protects IP for the good of the
commons. The W3C has evolved
into that due to the people leading it
having a strong community commitment, but
we can't expect that in every case. Because
anyone can label anything anyway they like,
that leaves it to the customer to determine
meaning.
So here we are, and yeah, let's do the soul searching,
but moreover, let's increase the awareness of the
benefits of real standards over faux standards,
let's separate specs that are R&D from products
ready for prime time (Tim's recent blog on the
web services standards is a good move in that
direction), and let's demand more from these
groups such as conformance tests with test marks.
We may want to explore what conformance and/or
certification tests are so we can make those
demands reasonable but effective.
Otherwise, the standards, as Bob said and others
said before him, only benefit the guys with
deep enough pockets to create them. Worse,
the IP wars will just get more expensive because
these are businessmen who have found a way to
put money in the quarterlies with only a
lawsuit. They are doing their jobs; we should do
ours too.
len
From: Michael Champion [mailto:mc@xegesis.org]
On Apr 29, 2004, at 9:39 AM, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> You like the credit for being the
> "co-inventor of XML" but don't accept any role in the damage done by
> the
> gutting of ISO and the norms of standardization that stood
> in your way.
I wasn't around back then, but AFAIK, ISO committed seppuku as far as
"SGML for the Web" is concerned; Tim (Bray and/or Berners-Lee) didn't
gut it. :-)
> "As the twig is bent...", Tim. One has to
> take the long view or short term gains in technical
> specification turn into big losses in cultural cooperation.
> Internet time is bullsh*t.
It seems to me that one has to take the long AND the short view. Joint
R&D is a Good Thing; Recommendations about what appears to actually
work and would work better if the relatively small differences were
smoothed out are a Good Thing; and real honest International Standards
are a Good Thing, but they should not be promulgated until the
underlying specs have matured.
So in my very humble opinion:
-- IBEASoft should be more honest that what they are doing with the
WS-* specs are joint R&D projects, and should correct journalists who
call them "standards" or "recommendations" (except in the sense that
their marketing departments "recommend" the products built around
them).
-- W3C and OASIS should likewise avoid calling what they do 'standards'
-- they are consortium recommendations, hopefully based on an analysis
of best practice and applied theory. (The Design by Committee stuff
like WXS or XQuery is pretty much equivalent to the joint R&D projects
as far as I'm concerned, and should have some designation other than
Recommendation until best practice is clear).
-- The "real" standards organizations such as ISO, ITU, and CEFACT
should focus on sweeping up after the parade, and not pursuing pet
projects of key participants or pursuing essentially political goals .
In other words, there is plenty of credit and blame to go around for
the current state of affairs, there's been a lot of innovation but no
organization or consortium has done all that great a job of following
their own guidelines, and plenty of soul searching by a lot of people
(not just stupid journalists) is needed to improve it.
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