Re: [forum] cooperation with ISO

[<Jim.Gettys@hp.com>]

The closest well known formal standards body to open source/free software 
in spirit is the IETF: but they generally try not to standardize API's 
at all (the socket API is about the only thing they've done). I'm intimately 
aware of the IETF process, the people and the culture, having been the 
editor of the HTTP/1.1 specification.  During this period, I reported 
into the standards part of Digital/Compaq and found it educational: from 
a vendor's point of view, vendors often go "standards body shopping" to 
find one they believe they can manipulate via corporate or country voting 
to get the outcome most favorable to them.  The companies motives varied 
from very honorable to very dishonorable, depending on the company and 
circumstance.

X.org does not currently have any mechanism for individual participation. 
This is a fundamental bug of most standards bodies (not of the IETF), 
and unless that were fixed, is a fundamental non-starter, in my view.  
To fix it, if I remember correctly, would require renegotiation of all 
contracts of the members, and most of the members who are participating
have been coming from the commercial UNIX side of their respective
companies.  Company based voting on standards with no voice from
individuals not affiliated with them gets us nowhere, and gets us
there very slowly, I think.

The history of most of the X Consortium standards development activities 
is not good (remember PEX? or XIE? for example), and I see no reason to 
continue in that mold; this is true of most standards in the computer 
area; not unique to X's history. The IETF koan is "rough consensus and 
running code", and we should follow it; it matches the behavior and spirit 
of open source software. So I'm convinced that ex-post-facto standardization 
is to be desired whenever possible.  And we must break down the walls
between the users, application developers, toolkit developers and base
window system developers to make this all thrive.

This leaves us with a major puzzle, if we believe formal standardization 
is needed at all (it probably is: the question is when).  My view is that 
the rigor required by good standardization processes is very desirable 
in the long run. The closest organization to open source's views is probably 
the Free Standards Group, I suspect; having not worked with them, I have 
no first hand opinion of that organization, and whether it is a viable
venue for formal standardization.

Despite the above statements, I think your view of ISO, Alan, is exactly 
correct. My view of both ISO and ECMA is pretty poor, having watched from 
the perspective inside a big company manipulations of them by various 
vendors, and the politics thereof.

				- Jim


> Sender: forum-admin@XFree86.Org
> From: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com>
> Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 18:18:29 -0500 (EST)
> To: forum@XFree86.Org
> Subject: Re: [forum] cooperation with ISO
> -----
> > ISO is currently starting up a study group on Linux
> > and related technologies, to see if there are any areas
> > that could be standardized thru ISO.
> 
> Do we really need ISO in the way. ISO's way of working
> doesn't exactly fit up with the Linux one. My experiences
> of ISO have been in the telco end of the world but they
> haven't been inspiring.
> 
> X.org seem to want to prove they can deliver. I've a lot
> more faith in them than ISO.


--
Jim Gettys
Cambridge Research Laboratory
HP Labs, Hewlett-Packard Company
Jim.Gettys@hp.com