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  • To: xml-dev <xml-dev@l...>
  • Subject: "Phase Relationships in the Standardization Process"
  • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
  • Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 15:57:18 -0400

This is probably ancient news to some of you, but James Gosling, in 1990 
http://java.sun.com/people/jag/StandardsPhases/index.html writes:

"For a standard to be usefully formed, the technology needs to be understood: 
technological interest needs to be waning. But if political interest in a standard 
becomes too large, the various parties have too much at stake in their own vested 
interest to be flexible enough to accommodate the unified view that a standard 
requires....

The sad truth about the computer industry these days [!] is that it is this last 
case that is dominating a broad range of standards activities. Standards are 
regularly created and adopted before anyone has performed the experiments necessary 
to determine if they are sensible. Even worse, standards are getting accepted 
before they are even written, which is a truly ridiculous situation.

The result of this is a tremendous disservice to both users and consumers of 
technology. Users get poor quality technology, and because of the standards 
process, they're stuck with it."




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