[OpenISO] Complicated standards (was Re: The C++ standard)

[Norbert Bollow]

Henrik Sundberg <storangen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Will the proposed resolution in OpenISO.org avoid such things?
> I.e. will OpenISO.org be able to look after the needs of the users of
> the standards (as opposed to the companies that define them) than e.g.
> ISO?
> I think that would be very good

Hypothetical: For some programming language, the existing vendors are
agreed in wanting a complicated standard while the users are agreed
in wanting a simple one.

Under the currently-proposed rules, what would happen is the
following: The OpenISO.org Working-Group dealing with standardization
of that programming language would spawn two stakeholder alliances 
(which would organize themselves in any way they like) and each of
these groups would try to come up with a workable proposal for a
standard.  The OpenISO.org Working-Group would evaluate both of these
proposals, and if both proposals fulfilOpenISO.org's requirements
(which include absence of vendor lock-in effects and existence of a
Free Software implementation), OpenISO.org would equally endorse both.

If the assumption of the hypothetical is true that what users want is
the simple standard, they can the Free Software implementation of that
simple standard or adapt it to their needs.  In particular there is
assuredly no lock-in forcing them to use the complicated standard.
If for this reason it turns out that it can be objectively determined
that the simple standard is used much more widely that the complicated
standard, OpenISO.org will update it's evaluations accordingly, with
the simple standard getting a higher rating than the complicated,
rarely-used one.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org