Standards, Standards Bodies, and "complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit"
Posted by Christopher Smith
If you haven’t read it already, run over to Tim Bray’s blog about the ISO BRM around the OOXML standard. He is a quiet, staid, technical expert, representing quiet, staid, Canada. Despite this, he was so disgusted by what happened that he wrote the following:
What Was Bad · The process was complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit. I’m not an ISO expert, but whatever their “Fast Track” process was designed for, it sure wasn’t this. You just can’t revise six thousand pages of deeply complex specification-ware in the time that was provided for the process. That’s true whether you’re talking about the months between the vote and when the Responses were available, the weeks between the Responses’ arrival and the BRM, or the hours in the BRM room. As the time grew short there was some real heartbreak as we ran out of time to take up proposals; some of them, in my opinion, things that would really have helped the quality of the draft. This was horrible, egregious, process abuse and ISO should hang their heads in shame for allowing it to happen. Their reputation, in my eyes, is in tatters. My opinion of ECMA was already very negative; this hasn’t improved it, and if ISO doesn’t figure out away to detach this toxic leech, this kind of abuse is going to happen again and again.