Calling OASIS a broad-based IT standards group is incorrect. Perusing the various technical committees there, it is clear that OASIS is a very good neutral umbrella for doing all kinds of standards work. The Open Document Format chose OASIS for a reason, as did DocBook. Now one could claim that ODF and DocBook are “IT-standards”, but that’s really not correct, especially for ODF, a standard which may be used for publishing, for business, and for technology — a whole range of vertical markets which are definitely in the digital publishing arena. Some in the ODF crowd have even discussed using ODF for distributable digital publications, which I have some difficulties with, but it does demonstrate that ODF is not considered by its proponents to be an “IT-standard”, but definitely intersects with the digital publication world in multiple ways.

OASIS has a huge number of member organizations, is neutral, and pretty much lets anyone set up standards work there so long as they get the minimum number of sponsors. They even support competing standards. What OASIS provides is a structured, but not over-structured environment to conduct standards work, and it forces full openness (which IDPF has yet to achieve.)

To address just one of your points. I totally agree that the publishing industry should maximize leverage from groups like OASIS: I sponsored the recent IDPF Board decision to join OASIS as an institutional member. I feel industry-specific organizations like IDPF should minimize de nova standards development and leverage broader IT standards as much as possible, as we are doing with OEBPS (based on XHTML and CSS) and OCF (based on ODF’s packaging).

That being said, it’s naive to expect that broad-based IT standards groups will successfully accomplish everything required for particular vertical industries. For example, the priorities of commercial digital publishing may not match the priorities of the broader membership of a group like W3C or OASIS. Thus successful industry organizations like OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) retain the capability to create industry-specific standards, even though they prefer not to do so. That’s what we’re balancing in IDPF, and it seems like it’s working well.

Calling for “all publication format standards work to move to OASIS” is about as practical as calling for “all law-making work to move to the Federal Government”. I tried to get an Act of Congress to lower the speed limit on my street, but that didn’t work out so well.

As far as “neutrality” – the IDPF’s membership appears to be at lesat as broad-based, within our industry, as the membership of OASIS. If anything, groups like OASIS and W3C tend to be more vendor-driven, whereas IDPF includes more publisher and etailer leadership which increases neutrality.