The ASCOM Standards Process (rev. April 2020)

The ASCOM standards process is informal since relatively few people are involved and the astronomy community overall is relatively small. By avoiding the stilted and often political "standards body" approach, standards can be proposed (see below), discussed, implemented, tested, refined, and accepted by vote more quickly and with a higher probability of success. See the ASCOM Interface Principle and Philosophical Issues below. Loosely stated, the process is:

  1. A single author publishes a draft interface specification. Ideally, this will be derived from an interface already in use and not designed in a vacuum. See Philosophical Issues below.
  2. Discuss the proposal on the ASCOM Developer's Forum until an interface agreement can be reached. See the ASCOM Interface Principle as well as Philosophical Issues below.
  3. Implement a simulator which has all of the properties and methods of the proposed interface (a reference implementation). Ideally this would be done by someone other than the author. Make the simulator available to anyone who wishes to play with it.
  4. Refine the specification and simulator as dictated by experience, again reaching an interface agreement brokered by the author. Discussion is closed at this point.
  5. The author posts a poll on ASCOM-Talk, giving the community several weeks to vote yes or no. Further suggestions and other feedback will be rejected at this point.
  6. If the majority votes yes, the specification is considered "adopted " and the author is responsible for writing the final standard document. If not, either go back to step 4 or drop the spec entirely and possibly start over.

Philosophical Issues

Real-World Designs

The most important goal of the standards process is to avoid the "design and decree" process that has caused so many failures and financial damage in the past. Typically employed by academics, design-and-decree just plain doesn't work. Professional engineers know it's essential to prototype, refine, and plan to throw the first one away or maybe start over.

Interface Agreements

Another important aspect of the standards process is that the author is responsible for brokering the interface agreement, a difficult task requiring sensitivity and above all the strength to reject "it would be nice if" suggestions which have no clear use-case.