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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] sunshine and standards development
 At 08:28 AM 10/14/00 -0400, Jonathan.Robie@S... wrote: > > The United Nations does not make all of its internal correspondence available > to the general public either. Nor do most charitable institutions, or most > corporations. If a corporation brings in an external group to perform an > audit, it is not usually a public mailing list. You imply that confidentially > is inherently evil. I just don't believe that. I suggest that confidentiality is an unfortunate burden carried by a technical decision-making body whose development processes affect millions of developers - Web developers, XML developers, and various other folks. (I could count users of W3C-influenced products, but I think we know how large that number is.) The W3C is neither a charity nor a corporation. Effectively, the W3C is the legislature of the Web, drafting laws that its members and others should follow. It is, of course, hobbled by lack of a court system and has only a tiny executive, but it does have law-making powers that affect far more than its members. While many legislatures do have occasional executive sessions, much work is done with the public in the room - it's generally considered a hallmark of good government, and not just in the US. (Even the UN is opening up more and more.) The W3C is presently accountable only to its members, who represent a tiny share of the people using its specs. While I'm very grateful that W3C public documents are published without licensing or reproduction restrictions, I continue to find it troubling that these influential documents are controlled by a vendor consortium with strict confidentiality rules and pay-to-play limits on participation. (Enough about the back door already.) It may just be that I have paranoid delusions or that I hang out with too many disgruntled folks at conferences. Unfortunately, problems with the W3C decision-making process appear to be quite real (even recurring), and there appears to be no way of addressing them given the current structures and process. > > All W3C standards are published for public review before they proceed to > become recommendations, and this public review is taken seriously. The W3C is > also quite interested in promoting open source implementations. I think that > it is very important to have our technical content reviewed. Allowing the public to post comments to a message board is not exactly a great way to include large numbers of people in the process or encourage them to write open source software, even if the carrot/burden of Invited Expert status is available. At least the WGs have begun cataloging comments and replying to them, a very welcome change from fairly recent practice. Opening doors is difficult, and I certainly recognize that. At the same time, it's hard to justify what looks from the outside like a deeply-held desire to shroud the decision-making process from the larger public it affects. Simon St.Laurent XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed. XHTML: Migrating Toward XML http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books 
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