And in fact ETSI makes no claim.
ETSI could not care less whether the Norm becomes law in each individual
country: in fact, what enforces the law, is not that the standardization
work is conducted in ETSI, but that the NSO that adopt it enforce it.
In other words, ETSI has no status to enforce anything by law, and therefore
could not reasonably make such a claim. What enforces the law is the
adoption of a standardization work (done by ETSI) by the NSOs, that act
under the authority of their respective national governments, and their
common agreement on the rules of the game.
But the processes of producing a standard and enforcing a norm are separate.
Understood. But that's inevitably always the case.
I don't know of any standards body that has enforcement
powers. Not even the ITU does. It is always the case
that national governments enforce the provisions.
So if this is the interpretation, the "voluntary"
qualification is totally meaningless.
In practice, the term has been used for decades to
differentiate between standards organizations that
have a nexus to governments or intergovernmental
organizations who make the standards mandatory in
some fashion versus all other standards bodies.
It was also captured in the "de jure" versus
"de facto" standards dichotomy.
--tony
