Jon Bosak has urged that future development of SAX
should be conducted in a "properly constituted OASIS
technical committee".
In a post to XML-DEV he said such an
action would ensure "the evolution of the
specification from this point on is guaranteed to take
place under
a democratic process that is open to all interested parties,
provides an IPR policy based on an open-source model, and is
visible to the world at large."
While these aims make sense for vendors, such a move
might not be totally palatable to the loosely-knit
collection of independents on XML-DEV, many of whom
contributed to the development of SAX. There is a perception
that consortia such as OASIS are inaccessible to the
independent developer.
David Megginson, co-ordinator of SAX, responded in a
post entitled "Democracy and the future of SAX":
"If we strike a formal committee for
SAX at this point, even a small one, then it will take
months or years
before a final version of SAX2 sees the light of day;
furthermore,
people outside the committee (that's most of you) will end
up with
effectively no say at all."
Megginson goes on to indicate that after SAX2 is
finalized, he would like to relinquish the role of
maintainer. He further requests participants in XML-DEV to
"at least to start thinking privately about
where SAX should go after SAX2/Java and SAX2/C++ are
finished".