RE: FW: Request to the OASIS Advisory Committee on Technical Committees f or a DSML TC

[Norbert Mikula <Norbert@DataChannel.com>]

Terry brings up a very interesting/important point.

I - personally - very much believe that our process should be
open both to groups who bring to the table an issue/problem
to discuss at large, as well as groups/companies that
have an existing specification and want to create an
OASIS TC around it.
 
The important issue is that the process from getting
it from input to output is governed by the OASIS process
in an open and vendor-independent way.

Your voting idea make sense. But folks that start a TC
around some spec. - I believe - look for input/participation 
from the community at large, beyond a simple "yes" or "no".

The mere fact that groups come to us to work with the industry
at large on standardizing an already existing spec. under the
scrutiny of the consortium's members, shows that they have 
a genuine interest in openness and widespread acceptance of their
work. 

Of course, we always need to watch out and be careful to prevent abuse
(and will do so).

----------------------------------------------
Norbert H. Mikula 
Chief Technology Officer/DataChannel
Norbert@DataChannel.com 
Chief Technical Officer/OASIS
Norbert.Mikula@Oasis-Open.org 
DataChannel, 600 108th Avenue NE 9th Floor, Bellevue, WA 98004
Phone: 425.462.1999 Fax: 425.637.1192 <http://www.datachannel.com/> 



-----Original Message-----
From: Terry Allen [mailto:tallen@sonic.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2000 3:18 PM
To: actc@lists.oasis-open.org; Norbert@datachannel.com
Cc: workprocess@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: FW: Request to the OASIS Advisory Committee on Technical
Committe es f or a DSML TC


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