To: OASIS Emergency TC, Emergency-RIM Subcommittee
Summary:
This note references the 2017-03-28 Meeting Notes of RIM-SC
and a parallel discussion on the HAVE SC discussion list,
where options for use of OASIS hosted GitHub repositories were
discussed. The note highlights the opportunity for the
Emergency TC to sponsor one of more GitHub repositories for
development of open source licensed content, including some of
the software offerings mentioned in the Meeting Notes:
Framework-Toolkit Components, Custom Validator(s), Libraries,
Profiles, Reference Implementations, etc. We think
development of "running code", under any name [3], is one of
the best ways to promote adoption of OASIS specifications.
Details:
The published Meeting Notes [1] report: "We discussed
briefly the email conversation about OASIS policy on
Subversion, GitHub and Jira that Rex started yesterday
including expert pointers to OASIS policy documents from Robin
Cover. We decided put it on the agenda for the next meeting of
this SC and Elysa said it will be on the agenda for the next
TC meeting, too"
On the one hand, OASIS does support any TC's use of GitHub,
along wth Subversion/SVN, as part of version control for
assets created by TC members [2]. A TC can request as many "TC
GitHub repos" as needed, alongside use of SVN. Advantages of
GitHub over SVN include close integration of issues tracking
and candidate change requests ("pull requests") and commenting
("conversations") in a single Web interface as part of version
control workflow.
OASIS Open
Repositories
But: in cases where OASIS TCs also want to encourage and
support the development of (sic!) "software/code" [3] to
support prose specifications -- utilities, toolkits, parsers,
validators, converters, APIs, test suites, reference
implementations -- we also provide the hosting services for
"OASIS Open Repositories", at TC request. The Open
Repositories are usually more suitable for "code" development
because the supported licenses are optimal for open source:
BSD-3-Clause License; Apache License v 2.0; CC-BY 2.0; Eclipse
Public License v 1.0.
By contrast, the policies for TC member-only work (IPR
Mode, TC Process, Feedback License, Copyright Notice
constraints on "derivative work") are not optimal for
software and open source licensing. Additionally, OASIS Open
Repositories allow no-fee, full public participation as well
as TC member participation. Recruiting developers (free
participation) may be a good initial step in recruitment of
new Emergency TC members.
I have copied out the portion of RIM-SC Meeting Notes in
which software delopment options were featured; as far as I
know, all of these development options would be good
candidates for use of the OASIS hosted "Open Repositories"
RIM-SC Meeting Notes excerpted:
* Libraries
for Microservices
[Online forms-baed "free service that checks the syntax of
CAP XML messages and Atom, RSS and EDXL-DE feeds of CAP
messages. It supports CAP v1.0, v1.1 and v1.2."
* Open
Source Model
- Look at innovation in the open source arena for a model
for grass roots adoption How did Linux do it? Apache? MySQL?
How did Big Data get going once the need was understood?
* Custom
Validator, Libraries, Profiles, Reference Implementations
- Think about working with Gary on an IPAWS model. We did
the IPAWS Profile, so how can we build on that with perhaps a
Custom Validator like the Google CAP Validator
- What would developers actually use? (If we build it, will
they come?)
- What can we actually produce? (Libraries, Profiles,
Reference Implementations, Database Schema, etc).
- Can we find a host for persisting any framework-toolkit
components we produce? Is OASIS a good place for it
* Hosting
framework-toolkit components
- Can we find a host for persisting any framework-toolkit
components we produce? Is OASIS a good place for it?
Examples of OASIS Open Repositories [4] and the appliccable
documentation [5] for TCs' sponsoring Open Repositories are
provided below.
Please let me know if you have any questions about the use
of Open Repositories for code development in support of
Emergency TC prose specification development.
- Robin Cover
====== References ========
[1] Emergency Management RIM SC Meeting Notes
03/28/2017
[2] GitHub for OASIS TC (Members' Only) work
* Governed by OASIS TC Process, IPR Policy
[3] On definition of "code" and "software" (versus
"not-code")
No claim is made here about the usefulness of attempts to
closely define what is "code" and what is "not-code" in
connection with development of typical OASIS Work Products.
Under current TC Process rules, Work Products do often
incorporate "code" and "code-like" elements [machine-readable
files, including files of different types - Java code, XSLT
and Schematron code, "batch" files, Perl code...] , even
though the licensing for such code is often not optimal. Some
SSOs/SDOs support the use of licening (one single license)
applicable to both "documents" (prose-like content) and
"code/software". See:
https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2015/copyright-software-and-document
[4] OASIS Open Repositories (examples)
* Not governed by OASIS TC Process, IPR Policy; use CLAs
and open source licenses
OASIS Open Repositories as Hosted (on org "oasis-open")
CTI TC
DITA TC
LegalDocML TC
TOSCA TC
[5] OASIS Open Repositories: Documentation
--
Robin Cover
OASIS, Director of Information Services