<<On Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:49:28 -0400, Paul Koning <Paul_Koning@Dell.com> said:
XML is a nice and flexible interchange format. It usually isn't very efficient but probably efficient enough. It also is very bulky compared to the current format.
It's also horribly unreadable. Although there is sometimes confusion about what the current tzdata format means, it's very easy to read, and the most common types of entries require little explanation to understand.
A consortium formed for the purpose seems like it would work. The IETF is clearly also qualified to do it, and has a properly open process. The question is whether it would want to do it, or whether it would consider it out of charter.
Likewise W3C. I'd actually be rather concerned about a formal consortium. I believe it is very important that any new organization going forward commits to keeping the fruits of the project in the public domain, and nearly any consortium is going to have a great deal getting its owners/members/lawyers to go along with that. Formal organizations also tend to develop very formalized processes, and (even worse) eventually become dominated by professional minders (representing their employer's interests) rather than by the sort of people you want maintaining a fundamental bit of infrastructure like this. (Viz., ICANN.) That would be the worst possible outcome.
A government entity seems like a recipe for disaster.
OK, second-worst. Having the UN, ISO/IEC, or a national government try to do this would be even worse. (And the ISO process, at least, has bad IPR issues and generally delegates the maintenance to a member body, which reduces to the previous case.) -GAWollman