Voting rules altered for IEEE 802.20 mobile broadband standard

Ah, so now we know why it takes those IEEE task forces so incredibly long to get anything done: infighting. Turns out, the working group for the emerging IEEE 802.20 mobile broadband standard -- "which was suspended last year after a fight over members' real company affiliations" -- has altered its voting rules. Now, each entity will be allowed one vote rather than members voting as individuals "regardless of whom they work for." Essentially, these changes are occurring amidst concern about "domination of the group," and 802.20 Committee Chairman Paul Nikolich reportedly hopes than the voting modification will "help deliver the standard in a timely way." Of course, considering that some of the technology in the protocol was developed by Flarion (which was swallowed by Qualcomm), there could certainly be more problems around the bend beyond a straggle of control freaks.

[Gary @ Jul 23rd 2007 7:49AM]

pwned.

[strider_mt2k @ Jul 23rd 2007 8:23AM]

Don't strain yourself attempting to make sense there, bud.

[Bosco @ Jul 23rd 2007 10:38AM]

I say they adopt the voting rules of Engadget comment boards. Stupid changes to the draft can be marked by clicking the red minus. Great ideas with the green plus. A cookie placed in each contributor's browser will prevent them from voting multiple times without relaunching their browser. This system will encourage everyone to come back to the draft often to see if they have the highest ranked comment!

[joatmon @ Jul 23rd 2007 1:11PM]

"802.20 Committee Chairman Paul Nikolich" Paul Nikolich is not the chair of 802.20; he is the chair of the IEEE 802 Executive Committee. The chair of 802.20 is Arnie Greenspan

[siddharth s @ Jul 23rd 2007 2:19PM]

Well, come of that infighting was when other people noticed that a lot of "independent" contributors were actually on Qualcomm's payroll!

This sort of buyout when crafting open standards is really frowned upon.

And we all know how much Qualcomm loves open standards.

[Jonathan Worrel @ Jul 23rd 2007 10:06PM]

What happened to 802.16 (WiMAX)?