Minutes Draft from the OASIS Legal XML Member Section Electronic Contracts Technical Committee Secretary (File id: @@2711)

["Dr. Laurence Leff" <D-Leff@wiu.edu>]

            Minutes, Teleconference of August Third 2006
   The OASIS Legal XML Member Section eContracts Technical Committee

Present:

Dr. Zoran Milosovic
Dave Marvit
Dr. Laurence Leff
Peter Meyer

(Prior to the meeting, Dr. Milosovic discussed a special issue of
a journal on Contract Architectures and Languages.  It is now in the
planning stages.)

The meeting came to order at 17:08

Western Illinois University's proposal (hereinafter, the proposal) for
the Technical Writer Position (with Dr. Laurence L. Leff as Project
Director) was chosen unanimously.

We discussed the tight deadlines in the proposal and its relationship
to the delay in making the decision.  Dr. Leff reminded the audience
that the proposal did allow for this eventuality and that it provided
that the clock would be tolled should there be a delay in making the
decision to proceed with the contract and any delays in responding to
technical questions.

The committee decided that the dates should be computed on the basis of
Tuesday August Eigth. This allows for 1) delay until this
teleconference in making the decision as to whom will be the technical
writer 2) delay until Monday for Elkera to finish the packet (see
below) and 3) that the delay in making the decision as to the technical
writers means that the one month period allowed for preparing the first
draft of the specification overlaps with the beginning of the Fall 2006
semester at Western Illinois University.

For these reasons, the TC decided that the project will be considered
commenced on August Eigth rather than July 20th.  Dr. Laurence Leff will
recompute the deadlines from the proposal on this basis.

Mr. Meyer said that his developer and himself anticipate preparing a new package
which would include simplification of the structure of the schema,
more annotations and resolving a technical inconsistency between Trang
and Jing.  The latter is a validator for documents based upon Relax NG
specifications in either the compact syntax or XML syntax.  The other
is a set of tools for converting and massaging specifications.  Both
are available from thaiopensource.com from Mr. Jim Clark.  Mr. Meyer
said that this revision is "2/3" done and anticipates it being completed by 
Monday.  The TC decided that this material should be posted to the list.

The committee also discussed having an outside technical review of the
specification draft, possibly by the other candidate.  It noted that
the other candidate has not been associated with the TC.
 
Dr. Leff offered to arrange to have the document proofread by a service
he found on eBay.  Also, he noted that the University's writing center
will help with specific writing issues such as structuring or grammar.
However, everyone recognized that neither of these would be a technical
review.  It was also noted that we anticipated sending the document for review
of possible stakeholders and parties who would be interested in the
specification or who might use it.  However, the TC is not planning to
do any of these possible reviews.

The TC charge will charge its chairperson with notifying the other
candidate of the TC's selection.  It also recognized that its chairperson
would be the best person to work with the OASIS staff to arrange the
contract between Western Illinois University and the Technical Committee.
However, Dr. Laurence Leff is charged to assist him by preparing a draft letter
that the chairperson can use to initiate the process.

The meeting adjourned at 17:30