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Re: Internet standardisation remains unilateral
2013-10-23 10:00:19
Couldn't agree more. I was guessing that there were some who only
participated on-line but since I didn't know for sure, I didn't go
that far. As I said, the problem of attendance has been greatly
reduced if not eliminated.
Agreed that business interest is the primary driving factor and since
most vendors are in the developed world, that is where the
participation comes from.
Every standards committee I have ever had contact with found it
difficult to get "user" participation, Generally, those
organizations argue that the standards work was beyond what they saw
as their planning horizon. Of course, this doesn't stop them from
complaining that they had to buy what the vendors produce as opposed
to what they might liked to have seen! ;-) But we all know how
management tends to think. ;-)
Take care,
John
At 2:31 PM +0000 10/23/13, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:
Warning: politically incorrect statements exist in this email.
At 08:58 21-10-2013, John Day wrote:
From my experience over the years, I would generalize this that
the developed world has dominated the standards process in this
field, whether it was the IETF, ISO, ITU, or IEEE and most others.
Most of that has to do with the expense involved in participating.
The expense is a factor, but I would dispute the conclusion. To
begin with, I would note Mark Smith, who has a draft open in v6ops
but to my knowledge has never attended or only infrequently attended
IETF meetings, and Vernon Schryver, who has done quite of a bit of
work in DNS and other infrastructure but is rather proud of the fact
that he participates only virtually. It's unusual to be entirely
virtual and get something done - it's a lot easier for people that
rub shoulders physically at IETF meetings and take subjects to the
list - but it is possible and is done. People in developing
countries can contribute on mailing lists as easily as anyone else
can, and at the same level of travel expense and attendance fees.
I think the primary reason that the developed world dominates
standards processes is that the developed world has a commercial
interest in them. A network operator needs to understand how the
protocols s/he depends on work, and needs to be able to design and
debug his/her use of them. They don't need to know fine details like
Alternate Tuesday Rules except out of interest. The folks who write
that code absolutely have to know, and have to be able to ensure the
correctness and completeness of the specifications. Hence, people
worldwide consume specifications, but the people and companies whose
livelihood depends on involvement in the standards creation are the
ones primarily involved in creating them.
That's not a slam on developing countries or their capabilities -
they have smart and capable people just like the developed world
does. But they are, by definition, underdeveloped - they do not
operate in the same way that developed countries do, nor do they
develop the technologies that the world uses. As they develop
economically, they become capable of doing that, as for example
India is becoming. But then they are developed countries or at least
further in that direction, not "developing".
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