Schneier on Security

echo • February 16, 2024 4:05 PM

I don’t know how this applies but found it a useful model whenever I think about standards bodies and standards. It’s not unique to government but I do find government documentation and standards and overall governance is a real pain. The UK has traditionally been very poor with governance and documentation. UKGOV and GCHQ pretty much freeload off the NSA when it comes to adopting industry standards. So much for engines of change and post Brexit sovereignty. (Eyeroll.)

I always liked how the old OpenGL Architectural review Board (OpenGL ARB) was set up and how OpenGL was specified and documented and taught. Good governance, documentation, and learning were baked in from the start. (Yes, I know the world has moved on and today it’s all about Khronos and Vulkan.) SGI retained a veto but the board was comprised of anyone who was anyone in manufacturing and development with smaller organisations and end users represented via board members.

This was during a different time when the market, and media and media organisation, and even politics was different to today and social media didn’t exist…

One element of specifications was the core functionality plus various levels of optional additional functions. And no you couldn’t call your implementation OpenGL unless it passed conformance tests and various criteria. That’s all fine and good but what gave OpenGL it’s real power (and something Microsoft utterly hated) was the extension mechanism. This allowed introducing vendor specific functionality which might be copied by other vendors and the best might find their way into a later iteration of the specification.

I strongly suspect most people will miss this but the makeup industry isn’t too dissimilar in operation. Some brands have a permanent collection. Whatever makes it to the permanent collection is going to stick around. That will be different from a one off seasonal range or attempts to expand the range in general. Like gets more complicated if you factor in formulas and colour palettes (which interact) and margins and market segmentation but generally nobody treads on anyone else toes or goes out of their way to wreck this model. Certification and market testing is not cheap and anyone thinking they know better then their clients can experience a very rude career defining moment.

I know people think graphics and makeup are frivolous but the underpinnings involves governance and standards which if they break can end in people dying, or billions being wiped off a companies value or it collapsing entirely. The shift from classic pipeline to shaders, and from animal testing to no animal testing were pretty major changes no different in concept from classical to quantum. There’s similar ragged ends and fallbacks and R&D spend ongoing in there. I guess the thing is how well they handle it.