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Why Standards? – another point of view

March 19th, 2010 • Comments Off on Why Standards? – another point of view

During the past days there where several events where the topic ‘Why Standards’ was discussed. A writeup/summary of one of this events can be found here. Now read the following quote (out of context – I know :-)):

The people on standards bodies are in danger of speaking in an echo chamber. After a while, all they can hear is themselves

I do not agree with this. I will not comment on the ‘why standards’ and ‘we need standards for interoperability’ topics. But I want to raise one point: Why not see Standards bodies as Thinktanks? I mean so many people come together and bring in so many different opinions and points of views – which is very good so the solution (I do not call it standard now) will be cool (technology). I talked to so many people in the past days and all agreed that e.g. OCCI has some cool ideas. And we reached that by inviting all kinds of people with alls kinds of backgrounds to help create this cool thing. Okay we had our fights but somehow we reached consensus and I bet that a research lab of a company would have never come to the point where we are – just because they do not have all those different views.

Important is that you talk openly – if you have strict IPRs as a Standard Body and you’re not allowed to tell other people – you might indeed end up in ‘talking to yourself’.

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