RE: [oic] virtual ODF interop fest ?

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

"Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote on 02/19/2009 
05:35:25 PM:

> Please respond to dennis.hamilton
> 
> This is an intriguing discussion.
> 
> I like the permanent floating plugfest idea.  We can set it to music. 
Oh,
> right, "Guys and Dolls."
> 
> I'm not sure how we get it to work with OASIS rules and registration
> requirements.  Maybe we could use the under-used oic-comment list or use 
the
> OpenDocument.xml.org forum too.  (Baffled and will stop speculating ... 
.)
> 
> Exciting.
> 
>  - Dennis
> 
> PS: As far as I have been able to tell, anyone can use the oic Chat.  It
> would also be great if easy public participation were available. 
> 
> 

We can have OASIS create an additional special-purpose mailing list list, 
if we want. We have these with the ODF TC, the office-dev and office-users 
lists. You can read the OASIS Mailing List Guidelines (
http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php) and see that other 
types of lists are possible.  Maybe we we asked Mary really nicely she 
would create a -plugfest one for us.

My understanding of OASIS IPR is that the TC will want to only accept 
contributes from members on our oic list, or our document repository, or 
from the public to the oic-comment list.  Any other lists would be for 
discussions, but not for contributing material to the deliverables of the 
TC.  I think those constraints would be fine. 

Chat is ephemeral.  There is no log.  So it might not work well for this 
type of collaboration where vendors are all over the world.  For example, 
I just saw a note that said Haansoft in Korea now supports ODF.

In any case, I think there are clearly two modes of collaboration here:

Synchronous, with a compressed time scale, more upfront prep work, using 
chat
Asynchronous, with a more leisurely time scale, possibly we make it up as 
we go, and using a mailing list.

Both have their virtues.  In fact we might end up doing both, maybe 
building a community via the slower mechanism and then when the TC has a 
major deliverable, say milestone deliverable of the test suite, then we 
celebrate via a intense 24-hour or 48-hour plugfest.

-Rob