This whole process is dumb and — in this specific case — probably just cost industry tens of millions of dollars. It should stop.
Bingo.
A pay-for-play standards development organization should charge to _participate_ in the standards-setting activity, and NOT charge the public for access to the standards.
The ITU-T seems to have learned this, at least as to some things (e.g., the ASN.1 family of standards, such as x.680 and x.690). The IEEE should do the same.
Better yet, they should look at the IETF model, which has been working for _decades_. In the IETF model there is no charge at all, except for attending physical meetings. Mailing list participation is free. RFC publication is free. The IETF is financed via meeting fees and donations. Vendors have an interest in the IETF staying afloat, so they see to it -- their interest is, of course, the IETF's overall low cost to them (by comparison to OASIS, IEEE, ANSI/ISO, or the ITU-T), and the amount of review their specifications get.
Maybe 802.x dev should move to the IETF lock stock and barrel, you might say, but there is a problem: the IETF doesn't have a lot of expertise with physical layer protocol specifications. _Most_ IETF participants are at layer 2 and up. Of course, this can be fixed by... just moving all the 802.x work (and the people working on it) to the IETF.
EDIT: Mind you, getting the work done at the IETF would not be a guarantee of no such bugs. It would address the procedural and public access problems TFA talks about. But that alone is a huge improvement over using the IEEE for highly consequential specifications that greatly affect the public.
I recently found the need to understand the 802.11 standards in detail and was shocked to discover how difficult it is to access IEEE standards. I even work for $BIGCORP, with institutional access to various IEEE publications, but 802.11 isn't part of our subscription. I'd venture a guess that much of 802.11's security is by way of obscurity.
Bingo.
A pay-for-play standards development organization should charge to _participate_ in the standards-setting activity, and NOT charge the public for access to the standards.
The ITU-T seems to have learned this, at least as to some things (e.g., the ASN.1 family of standards, such as x.680 and x.690). The IEEE should do the same.
Better yet, they should look at the IETF model, which has been working for _decades_. In the IETF model there is no charge at all, except for attending physical meetings. Mailing list participation is free. RFC publication is free. The IETF is financed via meeting fees and donations. Vendors have an interest in the IETF staying afloat, so they see to it -- their interest is, of course, the IETF's overall low cost to them (by comparison to OASIS, IEEE, ANSI/ISO, or the ITU-T), and the amount of review their specifications get.
Maybe 802.x dev should move to the IETF lock stock and barrel, you might say, but there is a problem: the IETF doesn't have a lot of expertise with physical layer protocol specifications. _Most_ IETF participants are at layer 2 and up. Of course, this can be fixed by... just moving all the 802.x work (and the people working on it) to the IETF.
EDIT: Mind you, getting the work done at the IETF would not be a guarantee of no such bugs. It would address the procedural and public access problems TFA talks about. But that alone is a huge improvement over using the IEEE for highly consequential specifications that greatly affect the public.