Technology Standards Guide

Standards Organizations

The importance of open standards cannot be understated. The advances in technology, radio, TV, computers, and cell phones have all relied upon standards that specify the way they communicate. Standard components gain the added benefit of mass production. Standard interfaces make it easier for humans to cope with the growing complexity of technology.

A number of organizations help promote, define, and deploy these standards by approving or advocating them, and publishing information about them. They might adopt the work of others, unify diverging specifications, or develop new standards from the ground up. I divide technology standards organizations into two groups. In the first group are organizations that address a wide range of technologies, like the ISO. In the second group are organizations with a narrower focus, like the W3C.

The First Group

The major standards organizations in the first group are:

ISO International Organization for Standardization
IEC The International Electrotechnical Commission
IEEE-SA IEEE Standards Association
ANSI American National Standards Institute
NIST National Institute for Standards and Technology

About ISO, IEC, IEEE, ANSI, and NIST

The Second Group

The second group includes these organizations:

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium: HTML, XML, CSS, HTTP
Open Group The Open Group: UNIX, X11
PASC Portable Application Standards Committee: IEEE POSIX, ISO/IEC 9945
ISOC The Internet Society
IETF Internet Engineering Task Force
ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
ITU International Telecommunication Union
OMG Object Management Group: CORBA, IDL, UML
Unicode The Unicode Consortium
OASIS Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems
LinuxBase Linux Standard Base
MPEG Motion Picture Experts Group

About The W3C, The Open Group, PASC ...

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