[HarfBuzz] MS unilateral authority on OT? was: Myanmar OpenType Specification by Microsoft

[Shriramana Sharma]

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Ngwe Tun <ngwestar at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm very happy to notify about Myanmar Script Specification by Microsoft. it
> might be updated since very long time agao. Mr Tin Myo Htet also update his
> font which is inline with MS Specification. We should go further with MS
> Specification and update in harfbuzz source.

I have always wondered whether MS makes decisions re changes to OT
specs unilaterally (or just by consulting some people at Adobe) or
whether they they actually discuss this on publicly accessible mailing
lists beforehand or at least consult OSS implementors of OT like
Behdad, Jonathan Kew etc?

I hope it's not as if they alone make the decision and the OSS world
has to follow suite because due to the fragmentation in open-source OT
engines (which HB-NG is intended to resolve) these have no voice...

I see Behdad raising Unicode-property related issues on the Unicore
list, but of course he's present there courtesy Google IIUC, but I'm
not sure if he is consulted by MS before these changes are made.

-- 
Shriramana Sharma