| Jan Vorbrüggen 2006-09-20, 4:01 am |
| >>>it's a product placement.
> See, you still don't understand.
Well, perhaps we'll just have to agree to disagree.
For me, standardization is a public service. A few participants will
participate out of the good of their hearts, but most will do so because
they expect to profit more from having a standard in place than if it
were not. Still, by the nature of the beast the rest of the world can
profit from such a standard being place without having contributed.
As such, the actual participants have no obligation to enlarge participation
of other, less interested people unless they perceive it to be to their
personal benefit - which in many cases they do not.
> The committee on
> the other hand will be presiding over a dying language.
Then so be it - apparently, they are wasting their time, in your considered
opinion, but it's not for you to tell them how to spend it, is it?
> Enumerate for me the means, short of meeting attendance
> (membership), that an ordinary user has of participating in
> the standardization process. I still see only the brief (and not
> widely known) interval during which suggestions for features
> can be made and the briefer interval at the last for public
> review.
I agree that the "public review" period seems to be inefficient - after
all, almost all of the work has been done at that stage and few committees
will be willing to lay waste to all the effort their members invested at
that point. However, all steps in the ISO procedure are controlled by voting
in the National Standardization Bodies, even at the CWD stage. You can either
become involved via that route officially - which, at least in Germany, tends
to cost you an annual contribution that can be substantial (in the one case
where my company participated in DIN, it's just shy of a thousand Euros a
year). But I haven't heard yet that the people formally engaged at an NSB
with a standadization project will reject (technically valid) contributions
from a non-member out of hand - after all, you would be helping them to do
their job, wouldn't you?
But perhaps your eperience in Britain (?) is different - tell us.
Jan
|