Standards often are made by insiders, established players, vendors with something to sell and so something to lose. Web standards bodies organized as pay-to-play consortia thus leave out developers and users, although vendors of course claim to represent everyone fully and fairly.
I've worked within such bodies and continue to try to make progress in them, but I've come to the conclusion that open standards need radically open standardization processes. They don't need too many cooks, of course; they need some great chefs who work well together as a small group. Beyond this, open standards need transparency. Transparency helps developers and other categories of "users" see what is going on, give corrective feedback early and often, and if necessary try errant vendors in the court of public opinion.
Count on Walt Hucks to nail it every time. Once again he comes through with another gem, commenting on the Mary Jo Foley interview with the slippery Tom Robertson, General Manager of laugh out loud "Interoperabiltiy and Standards" for Microsoft. I kid you not.