Doesn’t this makes the whole standardization process pretty ‘valueless’.

Kind regards, Marcus

http://www.xmlopen.org/ooxml-wiki/index.php/DIS_29500_Comments

The thing that caught my eye on slide 16 was this: “If, in very rare cases, patent holders are not prepared to grant RAND terms, there are several options…” And they then go on to suggest that disputing the “essentiality” of a patent is one way to get around RAND. Of course, in other standards bodies a corporation could certainly make that claim as well. But I wasn’t prepared to see this suggestion come directly from the SDO as a way of avoiding giving RAND terms.

Your additional comment about slide 16 puzzles me, though. Ecma does not assess the validity of patent claims, do patent searches, or define RAND terms. I don’t know of any standards organizations that do any of these things. The rest of the points on the slide as well; this looks pretty much normal to me.

I also hope that Ecma regains some self-respect and begins putting its standards through a thorough review. Otherwise, their imprimatur will be as valuable as a degree from a diploma mill. All you ever have is your name. If you soil that, you’re finished.

Bleh, even if they did give us such amazing standards as ECMAScript, DVD+R-R-RW+RW etc, doesnt’t mean they’re not rotten at the root.

I really do hope ISO, and other bodies ECMA fast-tracks standards to, review their contracts with this “standards” body, and consider revoking them.

Certainly if a company submits a high quality standard initially, it will be unharmed by the Ecma process. But if you send in some half-baked error-ridden specification, Ecma certainly is not going tell you to slow down and fix things.

So I wouldn’t want people to get the impression that Ecma makes standards bad. They don’t. But they do allow mediocre standards to pass through, and that lack of quality control risks tainting the whole organization.