Tuesday, 16 July 2024
It's often assumed that standards work is inherently competitive. This post examines why Internet standards are often more collaborative than competitive, and outlines some implications of this approach.Friday, 5 July 2024
The phrase 'Open Standards' is widely used but not well-understood. Let's take a look at what openness in standards is, with a focus on whether and how it helps to legitimise the design and maintenance of the Internet.Friday, 24 May 2024
It’s common for voluntary technical standards developing organisations (SDOs such as the IETF and W3C) to make decisions by consensus, rather than (for example) voting. This post explores why we use consensus, what it is, how it works in Internet standards and when its use can become problematic.Friday, 10 May 2024
Mandated interoperability is often highlighted as a way to improve competition on the Internet. However, most of the interoperability we see there today was established voluntarily: mandating it is relatively uncharted territory, with many potential pitfalls.Monday, 29 April 2024
It’s a common spy thriller trope. There’s a special key that can unlock something critical – business records, bank vaults, government secrets, nuclear weapons, maybe all of the above, worldwide.Sunday, 21 April 2024
Creating a Large Language Model (LLM) requires a lot of content – as implied by the name, LLMs need voluminous input data to be able to function well. Much of that content comes from the Internet, and early models have been seeded by crawling the whole Web.Wednesday, 13 March 2024
No one requires tech companies or open source projects to use most Internet standards, and no one requires people to use them either. This post explains why the voluntary nature of its standards are critical to the Internet's health.Tuesday, 19 December 2023
RFC 9518: Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards has been published after more than two years of review, discussion, and revision.Monday, 27 November 2023
A while back, the eSafety Commissioner declined to register the proposed Industry Codes that I’ve previously written about. Now, they’ve announced a set of Industry Standards that, after a comment period, will likely be law.Wednesday, 1 November 2023
There are lots of ways to view what Internet standards bodies like the IETF and W3C do. This post examines them as a type of regulator and explores what that means for how they operate.
Hi, I’m Mark Nottingham. I write about the Web, protocol design, HTTP, Internet governance, and more. This is a personal blog, it does not represent anyone else. Find out more.
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