Re: [xml-dev] Microsoft buys the Swedish vote on OOXML?

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

Several people have proposed that vendors be required to join the 
process 45 days, six months, a year or whatever before the vote to avoid 
these sorts of shenanigans. I think that's still open to abuse. I would 
propose an alternative procedure:

Anyone (natural person, not company) voting on a proposed standard 
should be required to affirm, under oath, that either:

1. They have read the entire standard and feel they understand what it says.

or

2. They have read the entire standard, and feel that it is 
incomprehensible in significant respects.

Of course, affirming #2 would only be consistent with a No vote. This 
would deter people from jumping in at the last minute to vote on a 
standard just to support their friends and partners. As a side effect, 
it would also encourage smaller, more modular, more comprehensible 
standards. How many people have really read the entire OOXML spec? or 
the entire XQuery specs? And personally six years in, I still don't feel 
like I fully understand the W3C Schema specs, despite having read them 
end-to-end multiple times and even written books about them.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
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