IGF Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS)

IGF had couple sessions by the DCOS coalition.
I attended the session on 6 th Dec 2008 on Reforming Standards Process...
All of the biggies from the industry were well represented...

IBM, Oracle, Sun and several others from open source world were present. NGO's Like ACT were very active. Members from several standards bodies were present.

I felt that the meeting focused too much on the OOXML and how different countries voted on ratifying this standard. Comments on linking corruption with the voting preferences was taken in a bad light(later apologised)

Microsoft person expressed need reform on the short duration of the fast track process. The Explanation was the ECMA was considered a Top class body by ISO and hence was given privilege of putting the standard on fast track.

I feel that the standards process initiated by industry consortium's/associations are useful to kick start the interoperability. The evolution and adoption of these standards on a global scale brings up the question who these standards are meant for, how does it effect them.

Although a very important point was made with a case study on smart cards(India) on how governments can leverage standards to reduce cost by creating a level playing field and competition. I fail to understand the role of National Standards setting bodies on voting for or against a already prevailing industry standard. What influence they have in mandating or adopting of this standard by the industry in the local country.

I asked this question in the forum and it was unanswered citing it could be long discussion by the moderator.

A rep from ACT quested IBM speaker on why IBM supports open standards where it is beneficial to them and why it does not open up Mainframe protocols on which it sued other companies into public domain.. Moderator exempted IBM person from answering this... citing it was deviating from the topic.

The Microsoft Person object including the Royalty Free patents in the Recommendations...Citing that Recommendation are agreements of the group... and he strongly disagrees on the that position. The Chair/Moderator change the Recommendation to Suggestion to satisfy him.

Overall as with any debate where the stakes are high, Comments and suggestion from the stake holders were guarded and vague.

The influence on the standards process by the people affected by them seems to be main theme of IGF. This is true on DNS/DNSSEC, IPv6 adoption(ITU vs ICANN) and Internet Standards(ISO, W3C, IETF, OASIS) proceses itself.