In January, Talkstandards.com hosted an open forum on SSO Governance and the rules of standardization (Event page here). The benefits of diversity were stressed by Oliver Bell and Ajit Jaokar who pointed to the fact that diversified organizations can fill gaps in the SSO market, which is done by e.g. the Open Web Foundation. No standard developed by any given organization can be said to have any immediate intrinsic value, thus a flexible and agile SSO ecosystem offers means to guarantee that market needs are fulfilled.
Read More…

The benefits from diversity and the risks of government intervention were at the center of the discussion during TalkStandards’ open forum on the issue of SSO Governance on January 28, 2010.

Oliver Bell (Reforming the Reformist Agenda) highlighted the benefits associated with a range of diversified SSOs.
Read More…

This interview with Peter Brown, Chairman of the OASIS Board, was conducted by email for the Talkstandards.com open forum on SSO Governance.

Peter Brown gives a valuable insight into the governance of OASIS and some of the rationale behind it. Also, Peter Brown offers his general view of governance issues such openness, governmental interference and much more.

Read More…

This interview with Per Andersen, Managing Director of IDC Nordic & Benelux, was conducted for Talkstandards.com via email during January 2010 in the lead up to the Open Forum on SSO Governance.

A major theme of the interview was his 2008 report titled the “Evaluation of Ten Standard Setting Organizations with Regard to Open Standards” (full pdf here). The report, that was commission by the Danish Government, seeks to evaluate and compare the openness of 10 Standards Setting organizations. A summary of the report can be found here.

Other topics addressed during the interview are SSO Governance, Open Standards as well as the role of government in the standards setting process.
Read More…

I have been a member of the Open Web Foundation for some time now. On first impressions, one may wonder: Why do we need yet another Web SSO/standardization body? However, in my view, the Open Web Foundation (OWF) fulfills a key role not currently occupied by other standards bodies so far.

The OWF home page says
Read More…

In a speech last October, Neelie Kroes summed up the Commission’s stance (at the time) toward standard setting and, in doing so, highlighted a key area of policy debate: the role of government. In particular, she stated that:

“A more productive type of intervention [as compared to ex post antitrust/competition based on Article 82 or the Sherman Act] is, however, when the Commission follows the adage that ‘prevention is better than cure’. In other words
Read More…

Conversations about the governance of standards setting organizations will from time to time stray towards the topic of reform, along with the need for simplicity in the standards development process. I would argue that the complexity that we deal with today is both necessary and an important component of a functioning ICT industry.
Read More…