How To Build A Consortium

Building an effective consortium means selecting and snapping together well-recognized programmatic modules until you have what you need.

The Standards MetaLibrary includes categorized abstracts and links to over 1800 scholarly articles relating to standards. It's the largest resource of its kind, and receives tens of thousands of visits a month from all over the world. Shouldn't your work be there?

Another crop of consortia is launched every year. Don't we have too many already? The answer is both yes and no.

The last 25 years have been marked by an explosion of consortia formed to develop, promote and otherwise support ICT standards. The reasons for creating a new consortium include the absence of appropriate technical expertise, interest, and/or supporting programs in existing organizations, and the benefits to be gained from directing all of the resources and efforts of a self-selecting membership ...

For the past eight years, a technology company called SCO Group has waged a single-minded and ultimately self-destructive barrage of litigation against IBM, Novell, and the Linux operating system. Paradoxically, the onslaught made Linux stronger, and the role of open source in the modern marketplace more secure.

Some of the most widely used and important open source projects of the last decade have been hosted and funded by individual companies rather than legally independent non-profit entities. Such corporate hosting can not only inhibit success in the short term, but place community developers and open source users at risk in the long run as well.

In this installment of my now-completed technology cybersecurity thriller, our hero realizes that he may become a suspect when investigators probe hacker attacks launched against the Library of Congress.

Heaven help us all in these United States. It's election time again.