David Orchard - Current Available for Employment:
One of the creators of Xinclude Was the BEA standards lead.
Dirty Laundry - URIs and non-use of URIs in web services
His story was about how the SOAP group would not embrace URIs. The lesson learned is that if a group doesn't buy into the feedback then there really isn't any point to give the feedback at all. Sounds to me that you can't force anything on a Working Group if they don't want it...that doesn't sound like a great way to get solid specifications. Maybe I don't want to know how the sausage is made.
James David Mason - Y-12 National Security Complex
In standards since 1981 when he attended the organizational meeting of V1(?). Charles Goldfarb was the chief evangelist behind SGML...and we wouldn't have SGML/XML without him...but...
James tells of seeing Goldfarb standing at a blackboard lecturing while two people were arguing loudly about something else, and someone else is yelling at Goldfarb. The only person with the correct response in the room was the person curled in a fetal position in the corner. Steve Newcomb is sitting next to me and states "have you ever been to a standards meeting?" me: "no" Steve: "He isn't exageratting."
What did he learn? Committee chairmen have to be stuborrn as a mule. Editors are not allowed to lock up a text and show it to no one else...in electronic form.
Lauren Wood -
Chair DOM working group
Her husband is Tim Bray, who was editor of the XML spec, Charles Goldfarb tried to get him to do something by working on her....obviously misunderstanding the professionalism of Lauren Wood.
The hardest thing to deal with is when you can't get companies to care about the topic of the committee. But sometimes when companies care too much it becomes a backroom kind of political games thing. Where people would call around to committee members and their bossses to put pressure for their particular spec change or desire.
Microsoft wanted Tim Bray to drop as XML spec Editor because he was consulting with Netscape. But Softquad, where Lauren Wood was working, took the stand that their suggestion for a replacement Eve Mahler who worked for Arbortext. What is comes down to is that people can do good technical work even if they are working for your competitor.
Mavis Cournane
In 2002 a European standards committee through Oasis where the after-market participants were non-technical and the automotive participants had no interest changing their processes. So the process went nowhere and the process died. No spec was created, it was a failed committee spec. So in 2007 a European Union legislative requirement came through that states automotive manufactures have to hold to the Oasis spec (that doesn't exist and no one agreed to at the time). So this is as a mess.
TO fix the mess...Oasis created a new type called an Oasis format...and the auto makers are basically screwed.
What she learned: Curb the powers of the EU. A sucessful standard will have to have a win-win for the key implementors of the standard. There should be some way to stop failed standards from becoming law.
Jon Bosak -
Started with formal standards on DSSL.
XML namespaces is his committe disaster. Namespaces were in play from almost the beginning...but not the forefront like we have now. Until the WWW6 conference in Santa Clara. Tim Burners Lee wanted to have a way to combine multiple repositories (?) in order to support something he called "the semantic web".
By 1997 the group tried to put the whole namespace thing behind them...but Tim wouldn't let it. By July of 1998 they had something but nothing that they were happy about. It arrived at W3C but Tim wouldn't approve it. Because they were using public identifiers for namespace implementation. In the end they were given one week to base namespaces on attributes based on an existing project of Microsoft. That's what we have here.
Jon doesn't blame Tim for this...although he wasn't happy with him at the time. The way W3C was setup at the time made everything roll through Tim which caused these problems. He also said that there is no way of knowing if the public identifiers would have worked better. But pushing it through too quickly is a real problem.
And governance matters. We need to setup committees and then wait awhile to see how things work out. Pushing things isn't working.
Also be concerned about the transparancy of the process. A lot of the problems came from hidding things.
Patrick Durusau -
A group of vendors wrote part of a copright protection standard that they wanted to push through Oasis. It was a DRM standard...a horrible piece of work. But the opposition wasn't uniform. There were people who wanted to just say "hell no" and hold the process hostage. It eventually goes on until there is a motion to disolve the TC. One of the very few TCs that just died. So the original group took part of the standard, went to ISO, and got it as a standard. But Sony turned around said,we aren't taking this standard...it sucks.
He compares this to OOXML. I don't understand the problem there. First time I heard about it was yesterday.
Microphone Comments (I didn't get them all):
David Lee - How does one get involved with a standards body?
Response: Jon Bosak and Lauren Wood - $$$ is an issue. But figure out what you are interested in, take a look and see if they will let you in, and if you really want to be in.
Simon St. Laurent -
He states that no one seems to be able to enforce their standards or even their own process or procedures? Is there any cause for hope in standards organizations. Simon seems very disturbed by the entire standards process. I wonder if he's written about it anywhere?
Response: Patrick says there have been informal conversation about reform but that's been the way it has been before.
Kurt Cagle - ISO has taken a significant hit in credibility due to the OOXML standard problem (what the hell happened?) How do you reestablish authority again after that kind of failing?
Response:
Jon Bosak - JTC1 is actually responsible but everyone seems to be blaming ISO. JTC1 is a combination of ISO and IEEC (?). So it is hard to get credibiilty when the actual culprit isn't identified correctly?
Response:
James Mason - ISO does a lot of standards that have nothing to do with software or protocalls or anything like that. So the processes and procedures may not always line up and they might be spread a bit thin at times.
Murray Altheim-
The motivation involved in becoming a part of a standard committee. Altruism is often a part of being a member. If you feel as a person that your skills can contribute to a standard that impacts millions of people then you have reached the highest part of charity.
Response: Jon Bosak- "Those of us who weren't put there as attack dogs for our company are there for the glory. Pure and simple." (I sure hope I got that out of context cause that doesn't seem to be the point Murray was making) - He clarified that by glory he means "between you and your maker", not between you and the rest of humanity.
Steve DeRose -
There is a human cost to doing what they are doing. I think that eludes back to what James was talking about earlier. Part of it is human nature (people get in a bad mood,just happens). Almost everyone on the original XML committee threatened to walk out, but no body did. Somehow they got past that and made it work. The way the committees are setup makes it difficult.
- There is a cost in $$ and time
- Experts may want to serve...but you serve at the will of the corporate interests
- Lack of respect from co-workers and academic institutions.
How might we be able to change that bias?
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