TC39 the Golden Child

The Evolution of Global Standardization Governance

As ECMA celebrates its spruce anniversary, I take time to reflect on what I see as a landmark effort in global standardization, that being TC39. TC39 is the governing body over the JavaScript language. A fairly balanced representation of global interests, public and private, sit at the big table. An iterative multi-stage process ensures that changes to the standard land gracefully in the ecosystem. This constitutional balance and self-correcting procedural discipline provide for stability in the worldwide commercial scope of the Internet. At this same time I juxtapose memories of the failed standard SCORM, which was imposed on the ecosystem by the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, a very non-representative body lacking a self-correcting procedural discipline. This is not to say that JavaScript will enjoy eternal life, but instead that other progressively governed standardization organizations, such as the W3C Community Group overseeing the WebAssembly standard, would do well to reflect on the T39 governance model.