Can standards be developed in secrecy in 2007?
2007-04-19 19:08 | Permanent Link | Locative, StandardsI really wonder why Paul needs to apologize. Carl Reed pretty much said everything in March. The Michael Jones quotes are pretty "classic Michael Jones" if you've ever talked to him.
Given that OGC says that discussion on KML will be open, this seems like a pretty bad way to start. If I were Google at this point, I would be in the OGC Planning Committee tomorrow asking some hard questions about whether OGC wants to help promote KML as a standard or whether it wants to continue its practice of keeping things under wraps.
Some of us were discussing this on the #osgeo IRC channel today. It seems that the OGC bylaws are a bit contradictory in terms of what may or may not be said about a meeting. I initially thought that Section 2.9(c) made it pretty clear that people are not allowed to blog OGC meetings:
No technology shall be made available by Members of the Consortium to non-Members prior to general release of such Technology by the Consortium according to a release plan approved by the Consortium's Planning Committee.
But nhv pointed out Section 12.4(a), which is really meant to absolve people of having to deal with proprietary information actually might leave a gaping loophole:
All information disclosed by any participant during any official meeting or activity of the Consortium, including but not limited to Board meetings, Strategic, Planning and Technical Committee meetings, Sub-committee meetings, electronic mail or the like, shall be deemed to
have been disclosed on a non-confidential basis, and, subject to rights and restrictions represented by valid patents, patent applications, and Federal and international statutory copyrights (no waiver of any rights pertaining to which shall be implied from such disclosure or the terms of this Section 12.4), may be used by anyone without restriction.
(I added the bold font).
This all sure makes me glad I'm working on GeoRSS and GeoJSON these days!
