Summary of points I raised in today's LwDITA subcommittee call

[Kristen James Eberlein <kris@eberleinconsulting.com>]

I don't know who was taking minutes, but I thought it might be useful if I reiterated some of the points that I raised in today's LwDITA subcommittee call:

If the LwDITA subcommittee wants to continue to exist

The DITA TC has requirements for subcommittees. Specifically, subcommittees need to:

• Have someone in a leadership position who is a voting member of the DITA TC. Ideally, the voting member of the TC would be the chair or co-chair. If that is not possible, the voting member of the TC could serve as secretary of the subcommittee.
  
• Meet at least once monthly.
• Keep the subcommittee resources up-to-date. This includes posting minutes and maintaining the calendar.
• Actively work on moving work forward.
  
• Have the voting member of the TC report once monthly about the subcommittee to the TC.

The DITA TC requirements for subcommittees are outlined in a document (attached), which the DITA TC developed and approved back in 2016-2017.

I realize that subcommittee members want to discuss whether they think this is feasible. If folks want the subcommittee to remain in existence, I'd like to see someone committing to the following by the end of the 2021 calendar year:

• Be able to be assume one of the following leadership roles: chair, co-chair with Michael Priestley, or secretary
• Be a voting member of the DITA TC

Options for the subcommittee to finalize their work on LwDITA

Obviously, if the subcommittee wants to continue to be involved collectively in defining LwDITA, the subcommittee needs to continue to exist.

What the TC considers viable options for finalizing the LwDITA work

The TC has discussed the following options:

1. Releasing LwDITA in conjunction with DITA 2.0 as a merged specification (suggested by Carlos)
2. Updating the existing LwDITA committee note
3. (Post DITA 2.0) Publishing the current LwDITA spec work (edited as necessary) as an OASIS draft committee specification. The DITA TC would then probably leave the document at this state in the OASIS process.

The conclusions of the TC were:

• #1 was not an option.
• #2 would be very labor intensive, as the committee note was: 1) authored to represent LwDITA as based on DITA 1.3 and so would require extensive redesign, and 2) not really the appropriate vehicle to provide the sort of element-reference content currently authored in the draft LwDITA spec. (The OASIS TC admin, Chet Ensign, also previously advised us that we were skating pretty close to the boundaries with the LwDITA committee note.)
• #3 would probably be the easiest and most effective. (This also was based on the assumption that the LwDITA subcommittee would close, and that. if possible, voting members of the DITA TC would step forward and try to wrap up the work on LwDITA.)

Recommendations to members of the LwDITA subcommittee

I recommended that members of the subcommittee focus on whether they can keep the subcommittee afloat.

• If not:
• the DITA TC will make decisions about how to handle work on LwDITA without any recommendations from the subcommittee.
• If yes:
• ÂMenbers of the subcommittee would continue to have resources (e-mail list, document repository, other OASIS benefits) to help them work collaboratively.
  
• DITA TC would consider recommendations from the subcommittee as it decides how to handle LwDITA.
  

Ultimately, of course, decisions about what the DITA TC publishes are made by the TC.

--
Best,
Kris

Attachment: SubcommitteeGovernance.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document