Java and the PAS process

Anyone who thinks standards just happen and the job of creating standards is easy, fun, and a chance to travel to fun places should have had the chance to help standardize Java. The Sun Microsystems director of standards, was given the "opportunity" of responding to the market's (users, providers, partners, competitors) request to make Java a standard. Everyone wanted it, and Java was already well documented, well known, and being tested and deployed all over the world. The first task was to determine which Standards Developing Organization (SDO) to use and which path or standardization process to follow as the specification moves from a Sun contribution to a final international standard. After much discussion inside and outside the company, we decided to go with the ISO/IEC JTC1 PAS procedure. Here, he explains the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) process and, so that this is not just an academic discussion, uses Java as the example of how the process worked and didn't work. The Java experience also serves to demonstrate that developing standards isn't simple; rather it's a complex discipline that seems (at times) to become everyone's favorite target.