This is offtopic to the purpose of the Austin Group so
I have directed my response to this reflector.
On Aug 5, 10:04pm in "Re: Standards accept", Nick Maclaren wrote:
> > I would like to dispel this misunderstanding but, before I do, I need to
> > confirm what is meant by "pseudo standards bodies". Does this mean the
> > Open Group, and the Single UNIX Specification?
>
> Unfortunately, I do :-(
>
> Before you wade in, I am very happy to say that my pessimism was
> initially supported by events, and was reinforced once or twice by
> events like the X11R6 shambles, but that I feel that the Open Group
> has learnt a lot, improved its quality considerably, and has been
> generally a benefit for some time.
>
Unfortunately the X11R6 episode was in my opinion a misjudgement in trying to
determine how to continue to fund the development efforts.
The consequence was that development ceased. I was the person
who restored the license on the web site.
> I am also talking about organisations like the OpenMP consortium,
> which has many of the same properties.
I cannot comment about them.
>
> What I am NOT happy about is for such bodies to claim that they are
> more "open" and more "standard" than they are.
Please give specific examples so we can understand what you mean.
We hold the UNIX trademark in trust for the industry and the Single UNIX
Specification is a profile made of standards (today the Base volumes
are also an ISO standard). We work with those who support and want
to develop the specification. You choose if you want to participate and/or
support the specification. We talk to our customers and members and organize
activities,forums etc that they want to develop and participate in.
We first made the Single UNIX Specification freely available on the web
in 1997. We've made all our specs available on the web in some form
since 1997. Today you can get all the pdfs to versions not joint copyright
with the IEEE for free off the web. We were pleased to work with IEEE
to agree to make the latest version freely available on the web in html.
You will also see that we expend much effort in supporting other
activities such as IEEE POSIX and ISO POSIX, and the Linux Standard Base.
>
> If you DO attempt to dispel this "misunderstanding", please do tell
> me how the board members of the organisation are appointed - and, if
> they don't control the organisation in the final call, who does and
> how they can override the board.
>
What's your point? We are consensus based organization. No one member has
the power of veto. The Board is appointed in a number of ways including
those who are platinum members and then a number of seats from different
constituencies representing customers rather than suppliers. The board
has an oversight role, the organization has its own management team for
day to day operations. For specification development, if you read the
technical procedures you would see that the board has an oversight role
to ensure process is followed. The working groups/program groups decide
their work program, develop and approve the specifications. All members
are invited to comment on all company review documents.
An overview of the decision making process is at
http://www.opengroup.org/~ajosey/decision_making.pdf
> I am quite happy for you to say that there is no black and white,
> and the IEEE itself was always an unofficial standards organisation,
> but that doesn't affect my remarks much.
You are welcome to your views, but please,please do not assume there are
not any alternate views.
-----
Andrew Josey The Open Group
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Email: yyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Reading,Berks.RG1 1AX,England
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UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the US
and other countries.
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