Comments

• Dennis Matthies

  2008-07-08 14:18:12

  You could probably go back 20 years and find records of ISO officials making these same points and asking these same questions about the fasttrack process, just like any other process in ISO... it is there role to ask questions like this then evolve the process (or not).
  
  This isn't exactly a smoking gun, more like a bureaucrat doing his job.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2008-07-08 14:29:18

  "This year WG1 have had another major development that has made it almost impossible to continue with our work within ISO. The influx of P members whose only interest is the fast-tracking of ECMA 376 as ISO 29500 has led to the failure of a number of key ballots. Though P members are required to vote, 50% of our current members, and some 66% of our new members, blatantly ignore this rule despite weekly email reminders and reminders on our website. As ISO require at least 50% of P members to vote before they start to count the votes we have had to reballot standards that should have been passed and completed their publication stages at Kyoto. This delay will mean that these standards will appear on the list of WG1 standards that have not been produced within the time limits set by ISO, despite our best efforts.
  
  The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are getting “standardization by corporation”, something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible. I wish my colleagues every success for their future efforts, which I sincerely hope will not prove to be as wasted as I fear they could be."
  
  

  --Martin Bryan, ISO 'Escapee'
  Formerly Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 WG1

  
  
  

  

• Conley Owens

  2008-07-09 21:03:51

  Groklaw has a summary? Where?

• Roy Schestowitz

  2008-07-09 21:07:51

  It was in News Picks , so the URL changes constantly (paging).