[LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 48, Issue 15

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <3B33E89C51D2DE44BE2F0C757C656C8809D6627F at mail02.stk.com>, "Finklema
n, Dave" writes:


>ISO has great influence, [...]


Objectively, the biggest difference between ISO and ITU is that the
latter is an UN sub-organization, and consists of governments,
whereas ISO is non-governmental consisting of national organizations
which typically are not subject to constitutional guarantees,
political oversight or even judicial review.

It is not clear if that means ITU can never sell a standard the way
ISO did with OOXML[1], but all else being equal, it would amount to
actionable corruption, should governments sell out, the way a lot
of ISOs member national standardization bodies did with OOXML, in
full accordance with their rules and lack of ethical guidelines.

When subterfuge is used against ITU, the usual result is usually
no standard, but a footnote that the topic is "for further study",
see for instance how they went about 56 kbit/s dial-up modems.

Both of ITU and ISO, as has been mentioned, were on the wrong side
of the fence with the OSI protocols.

Once the stance became ridiculous, OSI did the most hilarious
about-face, ratified TCP/IP and claimed that as a success for the
OSI protocols.  That one caused a lot of mirht at IETF.  I don't
belive ITU has tried to rewrite history the same way, but I may be
wrong.


Aside from that, I don't think either of them can credibly claim
to have a better hit-rate than the other, they're equally shitty
at writing usable standards, and both could learn a LOT from the
late Jon Postel in that respect.

Unfortunately, the ISO/ITU mindset seems to have increasingly
infected IETF, as anybody who reads RFC's can see.


I also seriously doubt that Dave will be able to drag leap seconds
from ITU to ISO, and can se absolutely no good or convincing reason
to do so.

Dave says that he "wants to use his influence in ISO", and that
seems to me to be an execellent argument against.

But I can't imagine an organization that derives it income from
selling standards by the page would ever find a proposal for a new
standard wanting, so he'll probably succeed in getting ISO involved,
and if we are unlucky, ITU decides to wait for ISO, and thus he will
set a final decision on leap-seconds back another 10 years.

At least that's what usually happens when ISO gets involved...

Long live Parkinssons law...

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.