Possible way forward for genericode and reminder of the new meeting time

[Andrea Caccia <andrea.caccia.oasis@gmail.com>]

Fellow CLR TC members,

firstly let me remind that our meeting today, and all the following ones, are scheduled 30 minutes earlier so:

08:30MSP/9:30Ottawa/13:30UTC/15:30Europe

As agreed at the last meeting I tried to outline some evolution scenarios for genericode, aiming to help the TC to make a more informed decision.

A first possibility is to progress genericode to become an OASIS standard as final target. The procedure is specified here:

https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/tc-process-2017-05-26/#OASISstandard

A second possibility is to target also an ISO/IEC standard (in addition to be an OASIS standard). If the TC confirms this intention, this can be achieved following two different paths:

1. short path:
1. progress genericode to be an OASIS standard
2. apply for the ISO PAS procedure, for example ISO/IEC JTC 1 (to be evaluated later)
3. then ISO ballot and eventual approval and publication (not an OASIS task)
2. long path:
1. make editorial changes to align with ISO/IEC rules (not easy even to estimate the effort required)
2. new public review
3. new committee draft ballot and possible approval
4. progress the new genericode committee draft to be an OASIS standard
5. apply for the PAS procedure, for example ISO/IEC JTC 1 (to be evaluated later)
6. then ISO ballot and eventual approval and publication (not an OASIS task)

We know that only the first submission to ISO can remain unchanged, even if not following the ISO directives. In case of update, but only if the TC decides to send to ISO also the updated version, it is mandatory to make it compliant with the ISO directives.

Now some personal view that I hope can help the discussion.

Taking into account that genericode is stable since many years it is not likely that in the near future it will change. The new version just published is in fact still fully compatible with the previous and initial one. So it is likely that if ISO accepts to publish the standard, it is unlikely that in a short period there will be the need to update it or - even if updated - that the change is so heavy that makes completely obsolete the previous version.

In case the option chosen is the short path the main advantage is to skip now the first step of the long path, that now is even difficult to estimate. Another advantage is that any ancillary deliverables that we may want to develop in future as OASIS deliverables will be be in line with OASIS generally accepted rules both in the ISO and OASIS versions of genericode.

The disadvantage with the âshort pathâ is that more time needed in case the TC decides to evolve genericode and decides to bring to ISO also the updated document. But we still may have to suffer delays with the long path if we overlook anything in the first round (or if ISO directives are updated), as correctly pointed out by Ken when I asked Ken his view few days ago from his editor perspective.

The big disadvantage with the long path is that it takes a lot of time, not even easy to assess now, for just no concrete result, only editorial changes and additional procedures to follow. 

Talk to you later,

Andrea