Re: Fwd: Registration of 6 charsets

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld@dkuug.dk>]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2000 at 07:43:19AM -0700, Mark Davis wrote:
> 1. SAP and JustSystems are not US companies, and a number of the others -- while based in the US -- are multinational companies in scope, and quite concerned with meeting customer requirements all over the world.

I take that there are international firms that are full members of Unicode.
Have Unicode ever had a meeting outside the US, though? (I am not talking about
conferences, obviously).
> 
> 2. There is nothing to stop other companies or organizations from joining as full members, if they are interested in supporting the Unicode standard. The consortium is a non-profit organization. The fees, compared to other consortia, are quite reasonable, and used to finance the development of the standard.

Nothing to stop them except a yearly fee of USD 12.000.

> 3.  Moreover, the work done via volunteer efforts completely dwarfs what is paid for out of the fees. Many people and organizations have influence over the standard and have made significant contributions without being corporate members.

Yes, but they have no voting rights.
> 
> 4. By your criteria, W3C and many other consortia (e.g. the Internet Mail Consortium) are as closed or more; W3C is much more expensive than the UC, for example. ISO  is also closed, since you would have to buy a small country to join.

Yes, I see Unicode, W3C and IMC as all in the same league.
I do not see ISO as being closed, you can participate thru your national organization.
And there is one in virtually every country.

> Are you saying that IETF should not depend on anything that those organizations do?

I am saying that IETF should be careful, and avoid it if possible. IETF should
preferably build on open standards, developed in open standards organizations,
like itself.

Keld