ISO
IEC
ITU
WSC
ANSI (in the US)
IEEE
ECMA
IDPF
W3C
IETF
WHATWG
Kronos
MPEG
X
ITU
etc
etc
etc

There are a lot of "standards bodies"

National Standards Bodies
International Standards Bodies
Recognized Standards Bodies
Kinda recognized not exactly standards bodies
Consortia
Experts Groups
Foundations

There are lots of "flavors" of how standards are made...

They are all the same in some ways, and very different in others

And they change.

Why?
(a meta diversion...)

Scale

We only solve the problems we have.

You don't need to think about time the same way if this is your practical scale

~1800's: Industrialization

Steam Power
Semaphore Communications
Rotary engines
Telegraph
Railroad
Telephone

Number of Standards Bodies on the Planet

0

This is hard to manage for everyone.

Lack of standardization is a literal

train-wreck.

Interop on a grand scale gets important relatively fast.

New things require new language

1903: 1500 buildings burned in Great Baltimore Fire
The fire fighting equipment uses over 600 variants of hose size/couplings.

Competition run amok

~1900

Engineering Associations

National Standards Bodies

~1915

~1950

Business Groups

International Standards Bodies

Networking

IETF

~1980

W3C

~1995

ECMA

~2005

WHATWG

"The commons"

slow.

Not cheap.

Very long life.

Can't break.

The internet: 50

The web: 30

The problem space itself changes!

About 90% of Fortune 500 companies 50 years ago are gone or radically changed.
- Netscape
- Mosaic
- Opera
- Internet Explorer
Free software/open source
- Netscape -> Mozilla is the origin
- The first half of the web was all proprietary implementation, as of Jan 2020, all major ones are open-source
New devices / stakeholders

Where JavaScript the language and related efforts are standardized.

Where CSS, accessibility, internationalization, XR, many browser APIs and more are standardized

Where HTML and DOM are standardized.

We'll focus on these, and what they do today...

Technical committees

A committee of Ecma, with…
JS developers
JavaScript engines
Transpilers
Frameworks, libraries
Academics
etc

TC39

h/t to littledan

Stage 1: An idea under discussion
Stage 2: We're doing this and have a first draft
Stage 3: Basically final draft; ready to go
Stage 4: 2+ implementations, tests ⇒ standard

All standards bodies have some "stages" concept that is intended convey some to ~"degrees of real/stable/done"

... but it can be very different.

Giagianticus Corp

Warez 'R' Us

University of Research

Agency on Beauracracy

"Consortium Model"

Paid for by membership

Two special roles
"Director" and "CEO"

You have to be a legal entity to join

.... but....
It's not a legal entity itself

.... but....
It will be...

... maybe...

Members define how the W3C Works

"The Process"

~ Representative democracy

Advisory Board

9 Members

5 Elected
3 Appointed by the chair

1 permanent chair: the CEO

Advisory Board

11 Members

7 Elected
3 Appointed by the chair

?? a chair

Technical Architecture Group
(TAG)

Similar idea except chaired permanently by the director

Tim Berners-Lee

?? and then...

TBD...

1 Advisory Committe Rep Per Member

(ours is Juanjo)

1 Member, 1 Vote

We have the same "say" as Google... kinda.

Anyways...

complicated, subject to change

charter

charter -> AC?

Juanjo... WDYT?

Staffing of Working Groups

ACs may appoint 0...N people to participate in a working group.

When they do, they sign off on representation/basic IP issues.

Working Group

Working Groups can work on any document within their charter.

?? Proposal
First Public Working Draft
Candidate Recommendation
Proposed Recommendation
Recommendation

"Stages"

At each step

Working Group Members?

At each step

...Juanjo? (AC Rep)

"Recommendations"

Wait, is it a standard?

Meh.

"Working Groups"
- ~~Mailing List~~ Github
- "Regular" teleconfs
- "Regular" face-to-face

What people imagine...
High qualification requirements

Real qualification requirements... technicaly:

"Someone who paid money appointed you"

... but why?

~500 member orgs
3 web rendering engines + a few more "browsers"
- Overwhelming majority of WG members
- Overwhelming participation
A few non-web "other" engines
Everybody else
- Joins to stay abreast
- Joins for marketing/contact reasons
- Joins wide-eyed hoping to change something

One more "kind" of working group member...

The people who paid take a vote to invite someone...

Invited Expert

I am going to change the world!

Giagianticus Corp

Warez 'R' Us

University of Research

Agency on Beauracracy

Invited Expert

"Invited Experts" in reality

It's time consuming
It's slow
Everyone has topics
It's probably harder than you think
Doesn't map well to your "real job" usually
The most work happens in person...
- Who is paying for your travel/time off work?