standards-body

[Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu>]

Greetings!

The term for today: standards-body:

FOLDOC does not have standards-body but does list a defintion for standard:


  standard

<standard <http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/contents/standard.html>> 
Standards are necessary for interworking 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?interworking>, portability 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?portability>, and 
reusability <http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?reusability>. 
They may be de facto standards 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?de+facto+standards> for 
various communities, or officially recognised national or international 
standards.

Andrew Tanenbaum 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?Andrew+Tanenbaum>, in his 
Computer Networks book, once said, "The nice thing about standards is 
that there are so many of them to choose from", a reference to the fact 
that competing standards become a source of confusion, division, 
obsolescence, and duplication of effort instead of an enhancement to the 
usefulness of products.

Some bodies concerned in one way or another with computing standards are 
IAB <http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?IAB> (RFC 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?RFC> and STD 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?STD>), ISO 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?ISO>, ANSI 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?ANSI>, DoD 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?DoD>, ECMA 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?ECMA>, IEEE 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?IEEE>, IETF 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?IETF>, OSF 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?OSF>, W3C 
<http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?W3C>.


Wildes (and I checked under standards, etc. this time) has the ISO as a 
topic that is derived from "international organization" which is itself 
derived from "organization"

Techencyclopedia has standards bodies and then a list of standards 
bodies, but no definition

It does have standard: A specification for hardware or software that is 
either widely used and accepted (de facto) or is sanctioned by a 
standards organization (de jure).

The BSI site (http://www.bsi-global.com) offers the following definition 
of a standard:

****

A standard is defined as a document, established by consensus and 
approved by a recognized body, that provides, for common and repeated 
use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results.



*****

Discussion:

Hmmm, like the hierarchy of Wildes' but doesn't give us a defining 
characteristic for a "standards body."

Suggestion: standards body: An organization that approves documents that 
containing rules for some activity.

Note that I am trying to avoid describing how that approval occurs, it 
could be consensus, some form of dictatorship, or golden rule (those 
with the gold make the rules) type organization. We may all have our 
preferences but none of those characteristics seem sufficient to 
include/exclude an organization from being a standards body. The 
approval of documents with rules for some activity does.

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!