On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Nagarjuna G. <nagarjun(a)gnowledge.org> wrote:
free software supporters , hackers community and
several industries do
support free/open standards. This community is not small. ISO
demonstrated its inability already. We have to therefore make an attempt to
create an alternate body. May be an initiative to create an alternate body
may trigger ISO from restructuring itself and may become better than it is
now.
ISO may have become too big and too large which may be preventing it
to adapt effectively. But, as you rightly point out, it caters only to
a section of society, for purposes that favours their businesses, with
least concern for the marginalised - it can never be a
government-sort-of-mechanism that way which takes into account the
welfare of its poorest citizens.
"ISO only launches the development of new standards for which there
is clearly a market requirement..."
[
http://www.iso.org/iso/support/faqs/faqs_standards.htm]. It should be
clear to us now, that as an organisation, ISO possesses a deep-rooted
cognitive disorder, where negotiations or such efforts would induce
little meaning. Its an apolitical organisation worthy enough to be
disowned by our community which is a political one, having firm goals.
Of late, free software movement is mostly on the
defensive. It will be a
good way to take up proactive steps rather than spend our limited energies
in defending the moves of MS and others.
True, ROS team these days says "For
every OS, there is an equal and
opposite ReactOS."
Meanwhile, we should point out to the community that
ISO standard does not
imply free/open standard. Their criteria are purely technical, and clearly
favors the interests of a section of the Industry. We should create a
portal that shows how many of the ISO standards do not clear as free/open
standards to make our point. We may even demand ISO and appeal to remove
'open' from the OOXML, for that does mislead the users in a big way.
Looking at the increasing interest and participation from premier
research and educational organisations towards free-software
activities, what is needed, could just be a "GPL" clone for standards,
which can put the whole domain of standards into an evolutionary
process.
Please take the lead and do it, Nagarjuna. All the best.
CK Raju