[georss] GeoRSS and Standards Bodies

[Mikel Maron]

I've been very happy with the interest of the OGC in GeoRSS. Endorsement by an official standards body (or two) will bring exposure throughout the industry, and confidence that the format has been sensibly designed. As with many standards, and especially GeoRSS, the success of the format is linked to how widely it is adopted.

This has been my first participation in any kind of standards process and it has gone well in my opinion. By necessity, particularly with anything related to RSS, the process has been as open as possible, with no barrier to entry and any interested parties welcome to contribute as much as they see fit. Any changes to this "process", as much as we have a process at all, need to be discussed openly and clearly. Perhaps we should look at how microformats are principled and formalized, which GeoRSS has many commonalities (but also significant differences). 

I'm ignorant of how the OGC operates generally. And that's the difficulty. I don't believe anyone has been acting in a purposefully malicious manner; rather we have a clash of cultures, and a legacy way of doing things persisting beyond what's appropriate. Don't get me wrong, I am very interested to hear feedback from OGC members on GeoRSS. But I see no reason why the forum of discussion and methodology of format development need to change fundamentally once the OGC, or W3C, gets involved. Perhaps this will require the OGC to adapt to a new way of doing things.

My 2 pesos.

Mikel