Hi,
I am running for a position on the OASIS Board. I have
more than 20 years experience in the national and international standards
arena. I was a founding member of the OGC (1993) and have been working in
ISO TC211 since 2004. I have worked on a wide variety of standards
including GML, KML, WFS, WMS, WCS, WRS (OGC) , ISO 19111, 19107, 19108, 19136,
19142, and 19143. I have played an instrumental role in having OASIS
standards adopted at the OGC (in particular ebRIM, SAML and XACML) and vice
versa.
I believe that we are at an important juncture in the
development of open standards. This juncture is defined by our ability to
respond on two main issues, namely 1) rationalization with other standards
bodies 2) backwards compatibility.
10 or 15 years ago, most IT standardization efforts began as
national efforts that were then taken to global bodies for extension or
acceptance. Today we see most standards as being developed by
trans-national corporations or trans-national standards bodies. 10 or 15
years ago we saw competition between national standards bodies in a given
application area. Today we see such completion amongst standards
bodies. In areas where there is not outright competition we definitely
see significant overlap. As one example, the OGC has a standard for data
cataloguing and registration called CSW-ISO, while OASIS has a standard called
ebRS. I will not hear debate the merits of these specifications, just to
note that there are areas of overlap. These exist between all standards
bodies, and I believe that within the IT domain it is time that we develop a
framework of co-operation across a large number of these bodies in order to
rationalize who does what. This will lead to better standards and higher
levels of adoption.
The second issue which I will focus on as a board member is
that of standards adoption. Many standards (by OASIS, W3C, OGC and
others) share a common pattern as follows. A standard is created in some
haste. The standard is adopted by some vendors. The standard is
revised (often very substantially) and a “good” version of the
standard is developed. Almost no one adopts the new standard. Often
the cause of this lack of adoption is poor backwards compatibility with the “poor”
but adopted standard. This intolerable state of affairs threatens the
very fabric of standards which has enabled the IT industry to grow and thrive
in the past 20 years. The cure I believe is to have more realistic
objectives on what NEEDS to be standardized (not everything surely) and to take
enough time on the initial version to get the right balance between being “good”
and getting adopted. Often this means that we work with things that are
already in use and less than perfect. Adoption is the name of the game at
the end of the day.
If elected to the board I promise to work to put these words
into action.
Sincerely,
Ron
Ron Lake
CEO and Chairman
Galdos Systems Inc
604-484-2751
rlake@galdosinc.com