Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
bryan rasmussen wrote: > well come on, if the process is being gamed in an unethical manner do > you think that the ethical obligations of an oath will deter this? > People who could conceivably be taking a bribe to affirm a standard > will say, hey I was all ready to take a bribe but not now when they > want me to take an oath that everything is ethical! > Yes, I do. For one thing, in at least the U.S. and possibly other jurisdictions, what I propose is a legal concept that can lead to civil damages and perjury charges. More importantly, at least some people actually take such statements seriously and are hesitant to affirm blatant falsehoods. Engineers and scientists in particular find it very hard to flat out lie or even dissemble in situations like this. With very few exceptions, I tend to believe that even engineers with whom I vehemently disagree are indeed stating their views as they honestly believe them. I think these types of people would indeed be deterred from rubber stamping specs by such a commitment, even a non-legally binding one. Now if it were PR folks or salespeople who were joining the standards processes, then I suspect they would probably just go ahead and lie through their teeth without a second thought. We can certainly play with the details. For example, there might need to be a way to challenge a specific vote on the grounds that the spec was not understood. For example, if an English major with no prior experience in the field joined a working group discussing wavelet compression standards and voted within the first 24 hours of their membership, I suspect a reasonable appeals committee should nullify their vote. However I think the basic idea of requiring all voters on a standard to affirm that they have read and understood the spec they are voting on is sound. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@m... Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published! http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] |
