Re: [dita-adoption] Action Items: 01-08-2019 DITA Adoption TC Meeting

["Dr. Stanley Doherty" <stan@modularwriting.com>]

Hi David --

Your point is well taken. The Adoption TC has not been making general use of the OASIS-hosted GitHub repos. I can't speak for others, but I can share some personal thoughts.

1. Language TCs produce typically large, language specs that are updated incrementally over extended periods of time. Having a stable, long-term home for these work items on an OASIS GitHub site is a no-brainer. All contributors are OASIS members and they write for one, well-defined target audience.

2. An Adoption TC deals with many smaller documents. These tend to be written by one person for different target audiences. Adoption TC members provide feedback to the authors, but do not often touch sources on a shared repo. Once the whitepaper content is accepted for publication and the DITA sources are branded for OASIS, it become OASIS intellectual property. These whitepapers are not updated after initial publication. They are not "live" documents as it were. 

3. An Adoption TC may recruit whitepapers from authors who are not Adoption TC members or even OASIS active OASIS members. Ideally, everyone developing whitepapers should be Adoption TC members, but there are many potential contributors out there for whom OASIS annual dues are an obstacle to participation. This differentiates OASIS participation from typical open-source community participation. Non-OASIS GitHub repos can provide an on-ramp for the content developed by non-members. Ideally, these contributors see the benefits of participation and find some way to become official members. 

4. Not all content proposed to the Adoption TC as whitepapers ultimately sees publication as an official OASIS whitepaper (making it OASIS intellectual property). Some just never get written. Others start in one direction, but then need to move in another direction based on feedback from the TC. That new direction may not be suitable for the original author. It's the job of an Adoption TC to clarify what it considers to be acceptable. I draft whitepapers in my own GitHub repos in part because I do not know whether the content will be acceptable to the Adoption TC as a whitepaper. If the content is acceptable both to me (the contributor) and to the Adoption TC (the publisher), I would gladly contribute the sources and IP to OASIS to host wherever they want. If the content is not mutually acceptable, I would not contribute it. The process of reaching a shared understanding of what is mutually acceptable takes time, so retaining IP with the author while the initial reviews and discussions happen is only fair. 

My personal thoughts . . . 

Stan 


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Hi,

I understand that the DITA TC has access to an OASIS sponsored GitHub repository. Does the DITA Adoption TC also have a similar repository?

I note that Keith and Stan are using their own GitHub repositories.

Please note, this is merely a comment, not a criticism. 

HTH,
David