[OpenISO] Software and Documentation for procedures?

[Norbert Bollow]

"Std Lib0" <stdlib0 at googlemail.com> wrote:

> can anyone point out to relevant documentation on:
> 
> 1) how to handle a standardization process.
> 2) open software to handle the process.

I think that's an excellent set of questions - let's _really_ try to
understand what we're doing, drawing on whatever literature and
experiences are available.

At the same time, I'd like to really get going with generating some
draft recommendations and problem reports for some specifications
that are worthy or not worthy of being called a "standard".

I think we just should avoid moving anything from "draft" status to
"published" endorsement or problem report until we're confident that
we really understand what we're doing, and that we're attracting
enough attention from interested parties that errors or significant
omissions are likely to get pointed out.

Here's a pointer to a book that might turn out to be useful as a frame
of reference in regard to evaluating existing standardization
processes an trying to develop one which works well and robustly:

  Surowiecki, James (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are
  Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business,
  Economies, Societies and Nations Little, Brown ISBN 0-316-86173-1

> My own thoughts:
> A system that seems to handle well the submission, review, comments,
> publication etc is PeerToPatent (http://www.peertopatent.org/).
> It's very open and all discussions are logged, commented and publicly
> accessible by anyone on the Internet.
> 
> - it seems to have a nice software to handle all the lifecycle of draft
> submissions.
> - some documentation on the process is here:
> -- http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/system.html
> -- http://communitypatent.typepad.com/project_docs/
> 
> Does anyone know how to obtain the PeerToPatent software???

I agree with taking inspiration from what they're doing, but
I don't expect OpenISO.org to be able to avoid developing a
software system of its own, specifically designed to support
whatever workflow patterns turn out to be appropriate for what
we want to achieve.

I would suggest that we should simply work essentially manually
for now, using this mailing list to document what we're doing,
until we have a better understanding of what we're trying to do
and of what workflow patterns are supportive of these goals.

By the way, I strongly agree with your suggestion (implicit in
question "2" quoted at the top) that the software which
OpenISO.org will use must itself be "open", or as I would prefer
to phrase that, publicly available Free Software.  When the
software which a standardization organization uses to implement
its workflow is proprietary (is this the case with the "livelink"
system used by ISO?) that has the effect of creating a form of
lock-in to the standardization organization which is IMO at odds
with the fundamental principle of openness that is so important
for legitimate standardization processes:  Whenever a group of
people feel that their concerns and views are not properly taken
into account by the existing standardization organizations, they
must have the freedom to fork the standardization process to
create their own specification, endorsement, problem report or
amendment documents.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                    http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG  http://SIUG.ch