[Fsf-friends] Futility of going after ISO

[CK Raju, Thrissur]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Nagarjuna G. <nagarjun at gnowledge.org> wrote:
 > free software supporters , hackers community and  several industries  do
 > support free/open standards.  This community is not small.   ISO
 > demonstrated its inability already.  We have to therefore make an attempt to
 > create an alternate body.  May be an initiative to create an alternate body
 > may trigger ISO from restructuring itself and may become better than it is
 > now.
 ISO may have become too big and too large which may be preventing it
 to adapt effectively. But, as you rightly point out, it caters only to
 a section of society, for purposes that favours their businesses, with
 least concern for the marginalised - it can never be a
 government-sort-of-mechanism that way which takes into account the
 welfare of its poorest citizens.

  "ISO only launches the development of new standards for which there
 is clearly a market requirement..."
 [http://www.iso.org/iso/support/faqs/faqs_standards.htm]. It should be
 clear to us now, that as an organisation, ISO possesses a deep-rooted
 cognitive disorder, where negotiations or such efforts would induce
 little meaning. Its an apolitical organisation worthy enough to be
 disowned by our community which is a political one, having firm goals.


 > Of late, free software movement is mostly on the defensive.  It will be a
 > good way to take up proactive steps rather than spend our limited energies
 > in defending the moves of MS and others.
 True, ROS team these days says "For every OS, there is an equal and
 opposite ReactOS."


 > Meanwhile, we should point out to the community that ISO standard does not
 > imply free/open standard.  Their criteria are purely technical, and clearly
 > favors the interests of a section of the Industry.   We should create a
 > portal that shows how many of the ISO standards do not clear as free/open
 > standards to make our point.  We may even demand ISO and appeal to remove
 > 'open' from the OOXML, for that does mislead the users in a big way.
 Looking at the increasing interest and  participation from premier
 research and educational organisations towards free-software
 activities, what is needed, could just be a "GPL" clone for standards,
 which can put the whole domain of standards into an evolutionary
 process.

 Please take the lead and do it, Nagarjuna. All the best.
 CK Raju