Standard setting and consortium structures

■ Within the formal standards bodies, the process by which consortia are formed and the rules under which they operate have been, at times, criticized as being somewhat elitist. This article examines consortia—not so much from the technical arena—but from a legal and “social” perspective, to show how they achieve the balance in interests necessary to create specifications that fill market needs. Based on a broad experience with consortia and consortia creation, the author argues that consortia are a powerful force in standardization, but require as much, if not more, care than do Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs), because they are subject to all the influences that have an impact on an SDO as well as their own influences. By looking at the X Consortium and contrasting this to the Open GIS Consortia (OGC), the article examines those factors that can make a consortia more or less likely to survive as a force in the market. oday, the sources of “standards,” broadly construed, constitute a wide spectrum indeed: from the market-power derived, vendor-imposed user environment that is MS Windows and Windows compliant applications, to international bodies such as the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) which promulgate a broad array of standards through a broad, participatory process. To the end-user (as compared to a vendor competing with other vendors), the source of a standard is of less concern than the utility of the standard offered (or even imposed). To some endusers, the quality of the standard is in fact secondary to the requirement that a standard, any standard, exist for ease of learning and using applications software (MS Windows again is the best example). Be that as it may, the market would still prefer a good, and not merely a mediocre standard. But what is a “good” standard? And what source is most likely to yield a good standard? Finally, when any group of persons or entities embark upon the task of creating a standard, how can they create a process that is most likely to create a good standard? For argument’s sake, let us say that a “good” standard must embody at least the following, very briefly stated, attributes: