> > Do you think that corporate domination of "open" standards development is OK? > The barrier for participation is low since there are no membership fees, etc.
For participation, yes, all that is needed is an email account; if one wishes to attend meetings (just the main ones - let's ignore interims), the bar rises considerably. The chances of dominating a WG or attaining a leadership position in the IETF are very close to zero without meeting attendance. I spend about 10% of my gross income on travel, meeting fees, etc. for IETF meetings; I don't consider that to be trivial.
Nevertheless, those who participate in standardization efforts have to spend their time.
And somebody's money: I spend about 10% of my gross income on travel, meeting fees, etc. for IETF meetings; I don't consider that to be trivial.
So, typically those who participate for a longer period of time need to have some incentives. These incentives often come from working for a specific company. We cannot force anyone to participate in any of our working groups. In the OAuth case we have lots of other people participating but they typically ask questions and provide implementation feedback rather than trying to steer the standardization work. Ciao Hannes PS: Eran was also working for a big corporation, namely Yahoo. I could imagine that Yahoo also had some incentives to pay Eran for his participation in this work.