Standards bodies like ECMA, IETF, IEEE, Oasis, W3C, WS-I are increasinly responsible for ever more pervasive standards. Yet they also face increasingly tight budgets while trying to police their standards. Mechanisms for self financing should be considered rather than dependence solely on user fees. An example would be to have a portions of the profits of Internet domain name registry accrue to W3C, ECMA, and other Web standard bearers. A similar opportunity may open up in the Web Services arena with a international repository of UDDI and other Web Service messaging info. Again a portion of the profits from such utlities could be apportioned to the major Web Service standard bearers.
The advantage to the whole IT community is that a)users pay the standards keepers proportionately and b) as traffic warrants, the standards bodies become less beholden to their membership fees and more able to create, test, and administer/enforce their primary holdings – the standards.
(c)JBSurveyer