Herald T. Lane, IBM’s Standards and Open source Director writes at “Best Practices for Standard Communities” de IEEE Computer:
“The technical standards world is in danger of being broken, hijacked, and exploited by partisan legal and political maneuvering”…
… “Vendors have been known to propose standardization for specifications of dubious quality, or have secretly ensured that their patented, royalty-ready technology is quietly baked into standards”….”They have also been known to toy with national bodies or foment political mischief”
… “Governments have unwittingly enabled such behaviour by implementing flawed procurement policies, or have muddied the mission of various agencies. Standards bodies have administered the coup de grace by putting their imprimatur of standardization of these rushed or flawed specifications”.
It comes to our mind some names of “dirty” players in the field ….
It is a pity that at the end of the article, he does not propose any brilliant best practice but to be more transparent by publising meetings minutes and the working group members affiliation.