Re: www-standards?

Michael Mealling ([email protected])
Thu, 16 Jun 1994 16:27:11 -0400 (EDT)

[email protected] said this:
> I don't want to interrupt what I consider to be a very interesting technical
> discussion for very long, but I must say that as a developer and an owner
> of a small software business that has been active in the software
> standards arena, (ANSI, POSIX and X/OPEN), you folks appear to be getting
> very close to attracting some attention from the standards community.
> My personal view is that the involvement of standards organizations in this
> activity might bring some value but that value might have a price.
> There is certainly a trade-off here and I, for one, am not sure at what point
> in the formative cycle of a world-altering technology such as the web that the
> value of standards activity can be maximized and the cost minimized.
> I suspect that now is not the right time.

Most of those who are active in protocol development are also active
in the IETF which is the Internet standards body. Currently there
are several Working Groups within the IETF who are working with the
Web and other services. Particularly the groups within the User Services
area: IIIR and URI. IIIR's task is to make sure that all the various services
(WWW, WAIS, gopher, X.500, whois++, etc) all work together and have some
kind of consistent inclusive architecture. URI is the group that is currently
finalizing the current URL specification (which 'should' be out shortly) along
with URNs and URCs (amongst other critters).

So, in response, I would say that WWW is already part of a fairly well
defined and extremely successful standards process. Check out your
local IETF internet-drafts archive for some good examples.

-MM

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<HR><A HREF="http://www.gatech.edu/michael.html">
<ADDRESS>Michael Mealling</ADDRESS>
<ADDRESS>[email protected]</ADDRESS></A>