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Re: a standards story

• To: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>,"Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>,xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: a standards story
• From: Alaric Snell <alaric@a...>
• Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 17:02:37 +0100
• In-reply-to: <p04330100b90ad42d9d33@[192.168.254.4]>
• References: <1021646343.2161.6272.camel@l...> <p04330100b90ad42d9d33@[192.168.254.4]>

On Friday 17 May 2002 16:43, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> What strikes me as most interesting about this is that people outside
> the working group effectively had veto power over the spec. If it had
> been left to merely the group producing the spec to decide when it
> was done, this would not have happened. I can think of at least two
> major W3C specs that would possibly have been vetoed if people
> outside the working group were allowed to vote, and I can see a few
> more coming down the road. External checks and balances are a good
> thing. The W3C process is sorely lacking a step in the process where
> potential users and implementers have an opportunity to reject an
> entire spec and send it back to the drawing board, even without the
> working group's consent.

<nostalgia>
Yes. I've been helping out a little on the XER working group, and it's 
actually quite useful to have comments coming back from all over the world - 
and being *forced* to pay attention to them! IIRC Japan or China made a 
wonderful job of going through everything with a fine toothed comb 
cross-referencing everything and isolated several little bugs that we - 
already too familiar with the specs, and therefore blind to them! - had 
missed. We had a proper formal meeting where we sat with the lists of 
comments, and each one had to be acknowledged as a flaw and fixed, or 
explained why it wasn't a flaw (but a FEATURE!) and all that.

I'm quite hazy on the administrative details, but the overall effect was very 
good. It provided thoroughness... without frustration.

Man, I wish I had more time off of work to go to the next meeting (sob)... 
that was fun...
</nostalgia>

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software  

• References:
  • a standards story
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: a standards story
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>

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