"It has been widely noted that ebXML had literally thousands of participants. Typical meetings were attended by upwards of two hundred people, and the majority of them came from UN/CEFACT, X12, and other centers of business expertise, not from OASIS [including many users of the technology, not just vendors]. The characterization of any of the decisions made in ebXML as driven by OASIS or by any one company is not only inaccurate but is also disrespectful of the membership that created the ebXML specifications.
[...] I'd like to say how sad I am that vendor politics has been retroactively injected into the ebXML initiative at this late date.
The ebXML initiative was remarkably free from the kind of partisan posturing we've been seeing over the last week. Perhaps it's just because vendor participation back then was considerably different from what it is now, but most of us shared a common understanding of what electronic commerce needed next, and all of us set aside corporate agendas to pursue a goal that we believed would benefit everyone.
The good news is that almost all the pieces of the original majority ebXML vision -- all except Core Components -- are now in an organization whose process encourages publicly accountable, open consultation and discourages formation of the kind of centralized control structures that can be hijacked by small groups with special agendas. Fostered by a loose but effective collegiality that builds on the modular structure of the ebXML architecture, the OASIS ebXML Business Process TC, ebXML CPP/A TC, ebXML Implementation TC, ebXML Messaging TC, and ebXML Registry TC continue to evolve and strengthen the majority ebXML vision forged by the ebXML participants themselves. In combination with related OASIS TCs -- UBL, eGovernment, BPEL, Customer Information Quality, and others -- ebXML is delivering on its promise to become the sensible and vendor-neutral next step for the world's electronic businesses, large and small."
Jon Bosak