[governance] RE: Post-Modern Paradigm for Standards--Some Comments

[Lee W McKnight]

Well....

Even if fundamentally flawed is it better than the default, which is more and more proprietary ' standards;' none of which pretend to do anything other than promote particular private interests in one market or another? But I defer to the general IGC sentiment not to sign on.

As I previously noted, for the WiGiT open specs v0.2 which we are just wrapping up, we have incorporated the new and improved by Michael and Norbert edition of the -not so - rfc.

Which to be cute I am dubbing the 'Post-Modern Paradigm for Standards' ; )

Along with 10 Internet Rights and Principles, and 14 accessibility guidelines.

We'll pass a link to WiGiT v0.2 by the list next week; more tweakers and editors for v0.3 are welcome.*  

(One way of thinking about what we are doing is extending Internet governance principles to - things - as in Internet of Things; from Clouds.  All clear now? ; )

Lee

* The fine print: WiGiT v0.2 has been developed in cooperation with the Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council of the TM Forum, an industry standards group; WiGiT v0.3 will be developed in cooperation with the IEEE 2030.4 smart grid interoperability working group.






________________________________________
From: Norbert Bollow [nb at bollow.ch]
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 5:12 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Cc: Lee W McKnight
Subject: Re: [governance] RFC 6852: Affirmation of the Modern Paradigm for Standards--Some Comments

Lee W McKnight <lmcknigh at syr.edu> wrote:
> An offer of a quote from a standards-knowledgable co-coordinator like
> Norbert on behalf of IGC might be well-received, eve if it includes
> some form of 'but...' along the lines of Michael's additions.

I'd like to credit Michael for pointing out that RFC 6852 may be
revealing some fundamentally flawed ideology that may be underlying much
of what we (the tech community) have been doing. I think that this
problem is much bigger than just standardization processes, and it
seems to me that in IETF in practice these problems are less pronounced
than almost anywhere else. So definitely I wouldn't want to point a
critical finger at IETF here. But where there are problems there is a
need for developing a strategy to address them.

In addition to the points of concern already mentioned by Michael and
Stephane, in reading RFC 6852 I find myself seriously concerned about
the following:

1. “Standards activities are not exclusively dominated by any particular
person, company or interest group” is a very weak definition of
“Balance”. Compare for a contrast the following passage from ISO:

    It is ISO’s aim and expectation that each of its International
    Standards represents a worldwide consensus and responds to global
    market needs. In order to achieve this aim, it has been recognized
    that special measures are needed in particular to ensure that the
    needs of developing countries are taken into account in ISO’s
    technical work. One such measure is the inclusion of specific
    provisions for "twinning", i.e. partnerships between developed and
    developing countries.
    http://www.iso.org/sites/directives/directives.html#toc_marker-1

ISO may not be fully succeeding in realizing the objective of a true
worldwide consensus, but at least the problem is acknowledged and
measures are taken to address it.

2. The document declares the development of standards under so-called
“fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND)” acceptable.
What FRAND actually means is that patent holders are allowed to
introduce patented concepts into the standard and then (within the
limits of what courts of law judge to be “fair”, “reasonable” and
“non-discriminatory”) collect royalties whenever a product conforms to
the standard. Furthermore, in spite of using the words
“non-discriminatory”, this type of intellectual property rules
seriously discriminates against Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
implementations.

3. Voluntary adoption and “success is determined by the market” is
declared to be the ultimate decision making authority on adoption of
standards. That ideology leaves no room for government decisions to
make some standards compulsory which are important even if the adoption
is not effectively driven by market forces, e.g. standards to ensure
accessibility by persons with disabilities. It also leaves no room for
allowing market failures, such as when companies with dominant market
position refuse to participate in standardization of important
interoperability interfaces, to be addressed by decisions of
competition authorities to make standards compulsory for such companies.

4. In view of the above concerns, I find it worrying that the
document is titled “Affirmation of the Modern Paradigm for Standards”,
implying that no improvements should be expected anytime soon.

Greetings,
Norbert

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