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Since I started that thread, let me reiterate the points that you are skirting:
1. Because of the rise of consortia and the proliferation of immature specifications labeled standards by an inexperienced press, the technical landscape is now litered with overlapping competing "standards". The term is now meaningless.
2. The role of standards traditionally supported procurement based on citation of international standards. This worked reasonably well with some exceptions.
The time has come to give 'standard' a meaning that supports both technical excellence and reasonable procurement policies. In my opinion, there are three legs, an organization must stand on to create legitimate standards:
1. Works through a legitimate and recognized standards organization with transparent processes. This means that while a consortium can create and vette the technology, the actual work of editing and shepherding the standard should be done by professionals. It isn't always apparent from the point of view of the technically trained how much of that work is legal work.
2. Must insist on participation agreements that clarify the status of all Intellectual Property constraints. Ideally, this is royalty-free implementation and indemnification for all members against lawsuits. This stops the SCO nonsense up front. This stops the Microsoft and Sun patents from having any more meaning than they filed the paperwork without due dilligence. We can't fix spilt milk but we can get smarter by learning how to stop the IP wars before they start.
3. Must offer conformance testing with a service mark for products which pass the conformance tests. This proves legally and technically that a product is what it says it is
with regards to the standard.
With these three legs, one knows:
a) What a standard is. It isn't a specification. It isn't proprietary and encumbered technology with a patina of 'standard wording' on it.
b) What one must do to comply and how to prove it.
c) What to expect. It is safe to implement the technology without keeping a stash of money for the lawsuits.
Without such conditions, the grand experiment in open systems, open source, and equal access will grind to a halt.
To quote again,
http://www.tdan.com/i016hy01.htm
"What Makes a Standard a Standard?
"Simple. Not implementation, but conformance. And, conformance is "known" only after
conformance testing. Then and only then can users know with any degree of certainty that a vendor's product conforms to a standard."
It is time to take the personalities out of this process, and to balance the role of the consortia that create technical specifications with the role of the international standards organizations to provide international standards.
Len Bullard
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