Charter clarifications

[Michael Brauer <michael.brauer@sun.com>]

Dear TC members,

one of my action items was to determine whether we need a clarification 
of the charter for the 2nd TC phase.

The process of charter clarifications is described at

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php#charter

The most important part is:

"The TC may clarify its charter only for the purpose of removing 
ambiguity or for narrowing the scope of the topic defined by the 
charter. The TC may not broaden or otherwise change its scope of the 
topic of work. The list of deliverables may be expanded if the new 
deliverables are within the scope of the topic; work on a further 
version of a specification after completion of the original deliverable 
requires a clarification of the charter."


The two phases of our charter are described as follows:

"1. In the first phase, this TC will use proven and established 
constructs so that the resulting standard can satisfy the immediate 
needs of many users, as well as serve as a base for future, less 
restricted development. The work of this TC in the first phase will 
concentrate on the following areas:
          1. establishing a mechanism and policy for extensions,
             preferably relying on XML namespaces,
          2. establishing a set of 'core' elements and attributes to be
             supported by all implementations,
          3. incorporating feedback from early adopters of the base
             specification and fixing technical problems that may have
             been uncovered,
          4. ensuring that the resulting specification and documentation
             are consistent and of high quality.
       The TC aims to complete the first phase within six months of the 
TC's formation.
2. In the second phase, this TC will extend the base specification to 
encompass additional areas of applications or users. The work of this TC 
in the second phase will additionally allow for the following areas:
          1. enabling additional areas of application,
          2. exploring new or experimental ideas for office document
             representation, and
          3. extending the expressiveness of the format.
[...]
Each of the TC's phases will result in a Committee Specification that 
includes:

     * a set of XML DTDs/schemas setting the vocabulary, constraints and
       semantics of the file format in question, and
     * a set of written specifications that describe the elements and
       attributes of the DTDs/schemas in plain English."


Conclusions:

a) The schedule is not part of the charter itself, so there seems to be 
no clarification required here.

b) Since the 2nd phase states

"The work of this TC in the second phase will additionally allow for the 
following areas:"

there seems also to be no change required to be able to continue to 
maintain the base specification, but of course we may clarify that we 
continue to maintain the the base specification in the 2nd phase.

c) We may want to clarify the deliverables: Since we continue to 
maintain the base specification even though we started to work on new 
topics, we actually may not only deliver specification at the end of 
each phase. In fact, in the 2nd phase, we may deliver specifications for 
new (i.e. phase 2) features as well as a revises base (i.e. phase 1) 
specifications.

Best regards

Michael