Some paths forward

[William Cox <wtcox@CoxSoftwareArchitects.com>]

Here are paths  successfully taken by some OASIS TCs in the past.

1. Stop at Committee Specification. Build businesses (via members) around the spec. Move to OASIS standard after there's a good base of interoperability. Many millions of dollars of annual revenue have been built on OASIS Committee Specification

2. Go for an OASIS standard immediately. Risks: version may not be stable or well-implementable, so will have to be redone. resistance is significant to voting on prospective standards that are not or have not been used to some extent.

3. Revise after implementation (into a new Committee Specification) and drive that one, with greater use, to OASIS standard.

Of these, 2 has the highest risk of failure.  1 and 3 have relatively low risk of failure in the OASIS standard vote.

In addition, 1 has proven very valuable. 3. has also proven valuable as well.

The thing to keep in mind is "what if you have a standard and nobody uses it?" It's important for the successful development of a market to have a number of independent companies using it and interoperating well -- and under OASIS rules the following stage (usually to ISO/IEC JTC 1) requires those multiple interoperating implementations.

Thanks!

bill

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William Cox
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