[OpenISO] openiso

[Marc Ravensbergen]

> Marc Ravensbergen <marc at shonetic.com> wrote:
> > This sounds like a good idea... my concern though is that most
> > organizations at some point in time are bounded by finance concerns,
> > and will eventually fall to the highest bidder.
>
> This is a very legitimate concern, once that we should very carefully
> discuss to figure out how to make OpenISO.org as robust as possible
> with regard to this kind of problem.

I think transparency is the key here; make every decision 100% out in the 
open, with all results fully viewable from the web etc. Any payments made to 
employees of this organization from companies seeking approval of some sort 
should be made illegal somehow... the devil is in the details here of course, 
as there are many ways to slip cash in under the table. Perhaps a full record 
of how an employee votes (and the reason why they vote one way or another) 
should also be made available to anyone. Maintaining a reputation I think is 
vital to the life of the organization.

>
> I'm pretty sure that OpenISO.org should be a foundation under Swiss
> law, not an association or corporation.  A foundation cannot be
> bought like a corporation can, and it cannot be easily taken over
> by a horde of strawmen who become members.
>

Excellent idea, never new that was possible.


> In addition I think that as soon as OpenISO.org reaches a certain
> size (a dozen employees?) there should be a kind of "Chinese Wall"
> between those employees who work on soliciting donations and those
> who work on resolving conflicts, so that the conflict resolution
> work will not be influenced by knowledge about where the big
> donations are coming from.  There should be a strict and strictly-
> enforced rule that the employees of the OpenISO.org copnflict
> resolution department will be informed only about how much money is
> coming in for the various work-areas of OpenISO.org, but not about
> who are the stakeholders who are making the donations.
>
> Even if we cannot expect OpenISO.org to be so robust that there
> would be a guarantee of it maintaining its integrity forever, let's
> try to make it as robust as we can, so that OpenISO.org will remain
> trustworthy for a long time.
>
> But all that is still pretty far in the future.  Right now, this
> OpenISO.org needs to get going as a project that generates some
> useful standards evaluation and standardization work in a reasonably
> objective manner.
>
> > You could start by listing some various standards that are freely
> > available on a page somewhere, with a rating system of some sort.
>
> Yes, I agree with this idea.  We need to work out a set of criteria
> upon which the recommendations of OpenISO.org will be based, while
> at the same time trying our hand at applying these criteria to some
> specifications which are "standards" in the eyes of at least some
> people.
>
> Here's a first proposal for a rating system:
>
> * strongly discouraged  --  pseudo-standards with vendor lock-in
>                             properties or negative impact on people
>                             with disabilities
>
> * discouraged           --  specifications which don't quite meet
>                             the minimum requirements of an
>                             OpenISO.org standard, but where adopting
>                             them anyway is not likely to result in
>                             significant harm
>
> * acceptable            --  specifications which meet the minimum
>                             requirements of an OpenISO.org standard,
>                             but where there is nevertheless an
>                             objective reason to avoid recommending
>                             them.
>
> * recommended           --  a good standard, fully worthy of
>                             endorsement
>
> * strongly recommended  --  an excellent standard without any known
>                             technical shortcomings
>
> Eventually, when the rating system and the underlying criteria have
> stabilized, OpenISO.org could start issuing "OpenISO.org certified
> standard" certifications, which would be available for standards
> that are rated at least "acceptable".
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert.

I agree with the rating system; keep it short enough to understand immediate 
differences between the ratings, but enough granularity to distinguish them. 
3 is not enough, any more than 5 will be confusing.

Marc