[CivicAccess-discuss] Cdn Standards Assoc (c) & cost recovery

[Karl Dubost]

Le 18 mai 2011 à 12:29, Tracey P. Lauriault a écrit :
> ISO material is just as costly and restrictive, odd, considering that contributions and standards development is done by volunteers.

It depends, but ISO and other orgs are started to be challenged see the recent decision of UK.
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/UK-government-open-standards-policy-in-international-dispute-1244652.html

        The UK Government policy on open standards appears
        to be placing them in direct conflict with
        international standards organisations. The UK policy
        is designed to level the playing field between
        proprietary and open source software by requiring
        only royalty free intellectual property be included
        in standards referenced for government procurement.


> For standards to be unbiased, there needs to be some sort of arms length from gov and industry, while in the end, standards are created by those at the table, which are primariy gov and industry.

Standards to be unbiased need to be implemented. There are not perfect things. The most important point is that the people who have a practical stake into it need to be involved and reach a consensus. Something which is only gov policies and no deployments in industry is a failed standard. Something which takes care only of corporate interests is also a failed standard.  Standards are hard. ISO (and other type of similar orgs) have a strong record of producing monsters which are not implemented and covered by patents. 

Organizations such as W3C have free specifications, a clear royality-free patent policy, and an open participation process. 
Not sure some of you are familiar with activities around egov at W3C.
http://www.w3.org/egov/


Disclaimer: I have been part of the staff of W3C from 2000 to 2008. And I'm working now for Opera Software, a browser implementer http://www.opera.com/ which is directly involved in W3C.

-- 
Karl Dubost
Montréal, QC, Canada
http://www.la-grange.net/karl/