Standards Article

[Kerry Webb]

At 08:30 9/10/97 +1000, Tom Worthington wrote:
>At 07:02 PM 8/10/97 +1000, Tony Barry wrote:
>
>>...I'm pretty sure that formal standards bodies have ALWAYS been 
>>dominated by "proprietry" interests as they were the people with the 
>>reps there and with the expertise and funding...
>
>My limited experience of being on SA IT/15 (Software Engineering) and in the
>balloting group for IEEE-CS Software Engineering standards is that the
>commercial interests are usually not overt. There are university, customer
>and Government people on the committees, as well as those making the
>products. I recall only one instance where there was a claim of stacking a
>committee with representatives of one company.
>

I can ditto this one, as far as SA IT/19 (broadly, library automation) is
concerned.
Members had to represent associations or major government bodies, rather
than individual organisations.  People from the vendors were there as reps of
bodies such as the Z39.50 Developers Group, and there was no obvious
pushing of corporate barrows.

Which means that we *do* have an opportunity to influence the standards 
process, if we are prepared to commit the time to go to meetings etc.

Kerry

Kerry Webb             kerry.webb@cmis.csiro.au
 Industry Liaison Manager, Digital Media Information Systems 
 CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences
 GPO Box 664                         Phone (02) 62167005    
 CANBERRA   ACT   2601  AUSTRALIA    Fax (02) 62167111