Is the Tide Turning Again? WS-MetadataExchange (Sun and Others)

More interesting news from the Web Services specification world, this
time with an additional twist beyond that exhibited by the WS-Addressing
spec news several weeks ago. Reported factually and with vendor
neutrality in mind:

This time, Sun has been included as an author on a Web Services
specification whose original authors include Microsoft and IBM. However,
an additional twist is that this specification - WS-MetadataExchange -
is not in an open standards consortium; rather, it is a "vendor
specification". It seems that the tide may be turning toward greater
support of development of such vendor specifications, prior to their
being submitted to an open standards consortium*.

Kind Regards,
Joe Chiusano
Booz Allen Hamilton
Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World

*such a submission is purely my own assumption, and is based on pure
speculation.

[1] http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2004-09-21-a.html
-- 
Kind Regards,
Joseph Chiusano
Associate
Booz Allen Hamilton