From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu Oct 27 2005 - 00:47:34 CST
On 10/26/2005 6:11 PM, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>The role of the UTC and of WG2 is to maintain the Unicode
>Standard and ISO/IEC 10646 and to make decisions regarding
>character additions. They have open processes for that,
>and people can get involved and influence those decisions,
>but ultimately decisions are taken, and the committees move
>on to the next decisions. It is a fundamental misunderstanding
>of those processes to insist that WG2 then behave like a
>panel of academics and write up logical explanations that
>will convince the world of the irrefutable correctness of
>every decision they have taken, item by item.
>
>
>
In other words, the requirements for 'due process' in standards
development are
different from those in the legal arena. There is no existing body of
'law' or
regulations that standards bodies interpret, nor are the participating
experts
acting as judge or juries. Instead, the process ensures that well-formed
proposals get evaluated, and that decisions are reached using the defined
methods for voting in the given standards organization, and that decisions,
once reached, are duly recorded, and when final, are published.
In order to streamline its work, each committee usually recognizes explicit
precedents, so as to not re-open the same questions continuously, or
defines other requirements that a well-formed proposal must meet in
order to be considered. Note that this is different from defining any
criteria that would cause the proposal to be automatically approved.
This is not limited to character encoding committees, but is true for all
standards that I happen to be familiar with.
A./
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Oct 27 2005 - 00:49:15 CST