Reuters: "Get Microsoft vote in perspective, says ISO chief"
Reuters European Technology Correspondent, Georgina Prodhan, has an interesting article "Get Microsoft vote in perspective, says ISO chief" based on an interview with ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden in which he told Reuters the uproar that erupted over the voting process was largely due to a poor understanding of the way that ISO works.
Bryden put criticisms of the fast-track process into some perspective,
Bryden said criticisms that a fast-track process was abused to rush through the Microsoft standard were unfounded, and said the process was not new but had been used for 267 standards over the last 20 years, 212 of which were still current.
Still, he said there were lessons to learn. "The experience with ISO/IEC 29500, along with the results of other standards development activities, will indeed assist in determining whether further continued improvements should be made."
and also addressed the issue of multiple standards in the marketplace.
Bryden said that although as a rule it was preferable to have a single, global standard, it was normal for more than one standard to co-exist at times in the fast-moving world of IT.
"In such cases, multiple standards can exist and it is the market that eventually decides which will survive," he said.
Bryden said he believed ISO would only emerge stronger from the controversy, which was not the first in ISO's history.
"Irrespective of the outcome of the current appeals, we are confident that the robustness of the system will again lead to the answer the market place wishes to see and, in fact, reinforce ISO's credibility," he said.
I note with interest that Alan Bryden was previously Director General of the French national standards body, AFNOR and Vice-President of the first Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade in GATT (now WTO).