Statements of Use for ODF 1.2

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

As we all know,  the OASIS TC Process takes specifications through a 
multi-stage process of reviews and approvals.  We're coming to the end 
this process for ODF 1.2.  We'll soon move from Committee Specification 
Draft (CSD) to Committee Specification (CS) and from there on to approval 
as an OASIS Standard.

In order to make the move a Committee Specification forward for ballot as 
an OASIS Standard, we must meet the requirements of section 3.4.1 of the 
OASIS TC Process (
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php#OASISstandard) which 
says:

"After the approval of a Committee Specification, and after three 
Statements of Use explicitly referencing the Committee Specification, 
including approval date, have been presented to the TC, a TC may resolve 
by Special Majority Vote to submit the Committee Specification as a 
Candidate OASIS Standard."

"Statement of Use" is defined as:

"...with respect to a Committee Specification, is a written statement by 
an OASIS Organizational Member stating that it is successfully using or 
implementing that specification in accordance with the conformance clauses 
specified in Section 2.18, and stating whether its use included the 
interoperation of multiple independent implementations."

And section 2.18 states the requirement that our specification "include a 
separate section, listing a set of numbered conformance clauses, to which 
any implementation of the specification must adhere in order to claim 
conformance to the specification (or any optional portion thereof)."

Finally, an Organizational Member is TC member refers to membership 
category.  Examples of non-organizational members would be Individual or 
Associate members.   My understanding is that the TC has representation 
from the following organizational members:

Ars Aperta
Beijing Sursen
Fedict
IBM
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34
KDE, e.V.
Microsoft
MultiRacio Ltd.
Nokia
Novell
OpenDocument Format Alliance
Oracle
Stichting Centrum voor Wiskunde & Informatica 
Boeing
UOML Alliance


So what we need to have is at least three "Statements of Use" as described 
above, from the companies above. 

There is no required form for these statements, but the minimal form would 
be something like:


CN [name of OASIS Organizational Member] is successfully
using or implementing [spec name, version] produced by
[TC name] in accordance with the specification's
conformance clauses as required in the TC Process Section
2.18.  This use [included | did not include] the
interoperation of multiple independent implementations.

Since we need to reference the exact version of the specification, please 
wait until we have an approved Committee Specification ready before 
submitting these statements of use.  But I did want to bring this up now, 
since if your company is anything like IBM, public statements like this 
require some internal review/approval, and that can take some time.  So 
best to get the statements lined up and approved, so when the CS is 
approved, you can just updated the date of the statement and send it to 
the list.

If anyone has any questions on this, please let me know.

Regards,

-Rob

P.S.  Finally,  My thanks go to Robin Cover for helping me track down and 
interpret much of this information.