There have been many discussions within OASIS DITA committees about discovering (and removing) the impediments to DITA adoption. It's probably fair to say that the discussions have discovered there are many roadblocks, but so far haven't resulted in clear ways to remove them.

This morning I read a throught-provoking article entitled Open Source Needed to Save Democracy, by Stilgherrian. Pondering the question of why open source isn't as successful as it ought to be, the author quoted Bruce Perens, of Open Source Definition, who believes many open-source developers have an attitude problem.

"Let's face it; most of us don't even like users. We call them 'lusers'. We make the software for ourselves and the other developers. Why should we like them?"

I wonder whether one of the reasons that DITA is not as successful as it deserves to be is that those of us on the TC might be making the standard for ourselves, rather than for the users, technical communicators. One common complaint from the users is that DITA is too complex. Maybe we can't see that complexity because we don't believe it to be true?