Re: FW: Request to the OASIS Advisory Committee on Technical Committe es f or a DSML TC

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

I just want to observe that the majority of requests to date
have been for the formation of a TC to bless an existing
specification.  I've just engaged in some straightening 
up on the tpaml list; the ciq folks, who haven't gotten
started, assume their spec is the point of departure, and
this one is along the same lines.

BTW, the original request for a tpaml list was particularly
bald:

In order to initiate the process for establishing Trading Partner Agreement
Markup Language (tpaML) as an XML.org Recommendation IBM hereby requests
that the ACTC authorize the creation of a mailing list in support of this
effort and appoint John Ibbotson of IBM (john_ibbotson@uk.ibm.com) as the
discussion leader.  We are pleased to have OASIS as the driving force to
facilitate the adoption of trading partner agreements in a vendor-neutral
manner.  

Now, it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to engage
in such activity.  But in the PAC we're contemplating allowing
people to brings specs into the process at later stages than
the formation of a TC to talk about them (e.g., without
formation of any TC at all).  The TCs that SGML Open/OASIS
has sponsored in the past (with the exception of Docbook)
have been intended to discuss issues and *then* come up with
specs (the XML Tables committee was a telescoped version of
this procedure).

So we might want to consider whether what would work best for
these requestors would be something other than a TC, for example,
a straight "submission" to the OASIS Board for a vote of the
members (as we anticipate allowing when the PAC gets through).

regards, Terry