Years ago, I was part of the team trying to define CORBA. While CORBA would go on to be a cautionary tale for bloated, useless meta-specifications (we would bla

Years ago, I was part of the team trying to define CORBA. While CORBA would go on to be a cautionary tale for bloated, useless meta-specifications (we would blackly joke that it was the only specification that made things less specific), once upon a time it was a relatively simple, useful, and elegant concept. Watching the industry consensus process destroy it was heartbreaking and educational. Lesson: There can be no consensus when members of a group are for-profit corporations with selfish interests and zero interest in the common good, there can only be lowest common denominator.