| James Giles 2006-09-19, 4:00 am |
| Jan Vorbrüggen wrote:
>
> This is part of your fundamental misunderstanding of what
> standardization
> is and how it works. It's not a human right where somebody else - the
> State - has a responsibility to take action to secure your rights.
> It's like a democracy: If you want to have a say, _you_ must become
> active and make your- self heard, at the polls and elsewhere. If you
> need information, you need to take action to get access to it. With
> regard to J3, it has made such infor- mation available at least in
> recent years in an easily accessible way, but you still have to read
> it yourself. Adn there is a defined process to get involved via your
> National Standardization Body (I know you know that). I believe you
> don't like the way this is structured, and so do I: But that's
> neither here nor there.
This is part of your misunderstanding of what standardization is
and how it works. This is not like a governmental activity at all,
it's a product placement. If the committee's intended customers
need information, it's the responsibility of the committee to try to
get that information to them. Posting the info in an obscure place
is like posting the daily specials of a restaurant in the kitchen
of the restaurant instead of in the newspaper. People will quite
naturally take the easiest and clearest course available to them
if you don't do so: they'll eat elsewhere.
As for getting involved themselves, the more ways of doing so
the better it is for the *committee*. You are still promoting an
either-or strategy: full membership or no participation. Few
people can individually do full membership. Few employers
can be convinced it's worth it. Especially given that most of
the advice from colleagues, industry, customers, and suppliers
is to switch to another product.
--
J. Giles
"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare
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