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Subject: Declare victory and retire? RE: [topicmapmail] PSI repository



OASIS PubSubj TC has been quoted several times in this thread, so I
considered my duty as chair of this TC to jump in and say something. So I
was about to send an answer to topicmapmail list, along the following
lines. But since it is certainly not reflecting this TC consensus, I prefer
to set the issue internally before.

Here is what I would answer to this thread, from a personal viewpoint:

=========================

- PubSubj TC has been very very long (almost 2 years now) to deliver
something that seemed simple to begin with, and that in its initial charter
was due more than one year ago (2002-Q1). The final editorial brushing up
and official delivery of this document "Introduction and Basic
Requirements" as a TC recommendation is long overdue, but that's all we got
consensus on so far: http://www.ontopia.net/tmp/pubsubj-gentle-intro.htm

- The very slowness of the process, and/or the lack of bandwidth of
participants, and/or the lack of clarity or consensus on what this TC
really wants to achieve, and/or the lack of investment in this process of
real users, all those factors have been slowly leading the TC activity,
over the past six months, to some kind of dormant stage. The pile of core
issues, in fact the very purpose of this TC : bringing practical solutions
for PSI widespread adoption in the industry, remains in standby. I'm not
even sure if what Tony refers to in the below thread, PubSubj TC pushing
for DNS-based against purl, is reflecting any kind of reality. PubSubj TC
is not pushing for anything right now, it's sort of stunned by the
complexity of the issues it has encountered, and does not seem to gather
the energy to tackle them and move forward. This is obvious from the lack
of reactivity and investment of everyone lately in this TC.

My personal hunch right now is that mainstream technologies will be
tomorrow, and that means *pretty soon*, the Semantic Web package
ontologies-OWL-RDF. I'm more and more convinced OWL objects (classes,
individuals and properties) can achieve most of the tasks PSIs were
intended to achieve for semantic interoperability, with the advantage of
clean semantics. (To go deeper in my conviction, I wonder more and more if
Topic Maps themselves should not join this mainstream or die.)

=========================

I'm pretty well convinced that I will not build consensus in this TC around
that viewpoint, and I have no intention either to fight about it, or to
endorse as TC chair options that I would not be deeply convinced to be
right.

The practical consequences of all of the above is that the wisest thing to
do now IMO woul be (quoting Sam Hunting after the painful delivery of XTM
1.0) to "declare victory and retire".

That means practically

- Wrap up Deliverable 1 (why this is not done yet, I wonder)
- Wrap up the TC, explaining publicly why (impossibility to meet its
charter, for such and such reasons).
- Let publishers interpret Deliverable 1 at will, and see what survives.

If the majority decides otherwise and wants to move forward altogether, I
will retire and let someone else endorsing the responsibility for it. This
is not an easy position, but I have engaged way too much time and energy in
the past two years for this TC, for quite a poor result indeed.

Bernard

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : topicmapmail-admin@infoloom.com
> [mailto:topicmapmail-admin@infoloom.com]De la part de Murray Altheim
> Envoye : lundi 23 juin 2003 11:32
> A : Anthony B. Coates
> Cc : topicmapmail@infoloom.com
> Objet : Re: [topicmapmail] PSI repository
>
>
> Anthony B. Coates wrote:
> > ** Reply to message from Murray Altheim <m.altheim@open.ac.uk>
> on Fri, 20 Jun
> > 2003 00:52:11 +0100
> >
> >>Since you've grabbed "PSI" itself, might I ask in whose name? As the
> >>individual Tony Coates? As an employee or member of some organization?
> >>Or do you plan to donate that domain for use of the ISO committee or
> >>OASIS' PUBSUB TC (as Michel did with topicmaps.org)?
> >
> > Well, I grabbed it as me, but I was hoping that the folks
> involved with the
> > PUBSUB TC would be interested.  Last time I asked though,
> their interest seemed
> > to be more around URL based on DNS names that begin with "psi.", e.g.
> > "psi.mydomain.tv".  So, I guess it depends on what the TC ends
> up recommending.
> > I was hoping that the PURL facility would be taken into
> account as a method to
> > help provide the kind of persistence that I would expect of PSIs.
>
> Yes, I agree very strongly. Since URNs have been so widely derided,
> I'm hoping PURLs can fill in the void. It's unfortunate that the
> pubsub TC is seemingly pushing toward DNS-based PSIs since not
> everyone has the ability to create subdomains, and I think everyone
> should be able to create PSIs if they want. OTOH, I don't think that
> everyone needs a PURL either, nor do I think the PURL mechanism
> could probably handle it (though I'd never expect PURLs to be as
> popular as DNS).
>
> >>This isn't meant as any criticism -- I'm glad someone within the
> >>community has "PSI" -- I'm just wondering about plans for usage. I
> >>think that, frankly, this kind of thing should be dealt with by some
> >>sort of committee, not individuals, maybe some OASIS TC should
> >>develop a set of rules for use. It could be ripe for abuse, e.g., it
> >>could really piss people off if say, this was posted by an individual:
> >>
> >>    http://purl.org/psi/logic/
> >>
> >>and then someone else came along and wanted that same base URI. I don't
> >>think "first-come, first-served" is a good policy. It just leads to
> >>grabbing.
> >
> > I would just like to see it used, and used in a sustainable
> and useful fashion.
> > So discussions on the best mechanism for this would be welcome.
>
> Well, since I neglected to say it explicitly: thanks. It was a good
> idea to grab the PURL domain. Perhaps absent any formal process you
> could safely create subdomains for proprietary companies or projects
> whose name is likely not to be contentious, such as PSI/ONTOPIA and
> other vendors (since their subdomains are not likely to be much in
> issue). And then they can manage their own subdomain. In this way
> you could treat it as if it were the very upper part of the URN
> space (e.g., "urn:ontopia:...", "urn:mondeca:...", etc.) since its
> apparently just about impossible to obtain an official URN subdomain.
>
> Murray
>
> .................................................................
> ..........
> Murray Altheim
> http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
> Knowledge Media Institute
> The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK
>          .
>
>      Why is it that they impeached Clinton when he lied about having sex
>      with a consenting adult, but they aren't talking about impeaching
>      Bush over having led the world into war by lying about the presence
>      of WMDs in Iraq? Is the US more squeamish about sex than war?
>
> _______________________________________________
> topicmapmail mailing list
> topicmapmail@infoloom.com
> http://www.infoloom.com/mailman/listinfo/topicmapmail
>




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