Today, it was formally(?) decided that RETS 1.7[.1] is about the best that can be achieved before the NAR's June 2009 deadline.  For the sake of edification, I'm including it here:

The integrity of data is a foundation to the orderly Real Estate market. The Real Estate Transaction Standards (RETS) provides a vendor neutral, secure approach to exchanging listing information between the broker and the MLS. In order to ensure that the goal of maintaining an orderly marketplace is maintained, and to further establish REALTOR® information as the trusted data source, MLS organizations owned and operated by associations of REALTOR® will comply with the RETS standards by June 2009, and keep current with the standard's new versions by implementing new releases of RETS within one year from ratification.

Now I'm going to do the posh thing and quote myself:

There is absolutely no chance RETS 2.0 will be done in fourteen months.

-- Matt Lavallee, RETS Assembly Meeting, Chicago, IL, August 9th, 2007

All I got then was hand-waving and chuckles...  Today, I may as well call myself The Nostradamus of RETS (although no one else will).

The ".1" incremental build is to correct some minor errata in the documentation of the specification.  This is truly pathetic:  RETS 2.0 was started in 2004.  How can anything be this slow?

For the sake of argument, let's look at the timelines of some other widely-known specs:

1. HTML
   1. Version 1: 1993.
   2. Version 2: 1995.
   3. Version 3.2: 1997.
   4. Version 4.0: 1999.  Note: Considered "good enough" by most of universe.
   5. XHTML 1.0: 2002.
   6. [X]HTML 5.0: 2008.
2. SQL:
   1. ANSI v1: 1986.
   2. FIPS 127-1: 1989.
   3. ANSI SQL2: 1992.
   4. ISO SQL3: 1996.
   5. SQL1999: 1999.
   6. SQL2003: 2003.
   7. SQL2006: 2006.
3. Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11)
   1. 802.11: 1997.
   2. 802.11a: 1999.
   3. 802.11b: 1999.
   4. 802.11g: 2003.
   5. 802.16 (WiMAX): 2005.

I understand the issues of timeline management and pragmatism, but come on... this isn't rocket surgery.

Here's how I understand our current timeline:

• RETS 1.7.1 - Expected standards vote December 2008, adoption by June 2009
• RETS 1.8 - Expected standards vote August 2009 (?)
• RETS 1.9 - Expected standards vote... December 2010?
• RETS 2.0 - Prediction: 2015+

This makes no sense.

I realize I must be thick in the head, but...

1. Thousands of developers across the globe "contribute" to MySQL to make it a reasonable RDBMS.
2. MySQL AB maintains a shell company of 350 people to sell and license this freely-derived product to corporations for thousands of dollars.
3. Sun acquires MySQL for ONE BILLION DOLLARS.  Contributing developers get... nothing.  A bunch of already rich people get more rich.

I must be totally off my rocker, because I see this as another sign of how "free" software hurts the developer community.  How can anyone stand by the Writers Guild while they fight for residual income (after they've already been paid once) and yet, in the same breath, say that not paying developers for their work makes sense.

I just don't get it.