Position wording for exploratory documents by DITA TCs and SCs

["Don Day (LbW)" <donday@learningbywrote.com>]

This note is for the attention of all DITA TC Subcommittee chairs who 
might not have been aware of the subject discussion at the DITA TC.

Recently, a concern was surfaced about how Subcommittees may most 
appropriately position or disclaim their technical proposals and other 
intermediate products, in deference to the DITA TC's normally final say 
about approved TC products. The DITA TC approved such wording at the Oct 
26 meeting. The discussion and consensus wording are represented in this 
note chain: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/201010/msg00126.html

The approved disclaimer wording for both TC and Subcommittee 
intermediate/exploratory products is this:

This document reflects exploratory work. It is not a reliable guide
on the future direction of DITA. It should not be taken as guidance
for using DITA or for developing DITA tools.

Hopefully this will help you position your SC's work as necessary to 
your audiences so that there is no public confusion about the authority 
of such intermediate products. Of course, those materials then may be 
later reviewed by and approved by the DITA TC as Committee Notes (or in 
some cases, as inputs to future Committee Specifications).

Subcommittee procedures are ultimately governed by the OASIS TC Process 
document, http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php#subcommittees 
. This document was updated as of Oct 15, so please review any parts 
that pertain to SC process and deliverables. Let me know if you have any 
questions.
--
Don Day,
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee