Re: [tcproc-member-review] Re: OASIS member review of proposed revision of TC Process

[Michael Smith <smith@xml-doc.org>]

jon.bosak@sun.com writes:

> Following are my comments on the proposed revision of the OASIS TC
> process.

[...]

> | All resources of the TC and its associated subcommittees,
> | including web pages, documents, email lists and any other
> | discussions, must be located only on facilities provided by
> | OASIS; TCs and SCs may not conduct business or technical
> | discussions, store documents, or host web pages on non-OASIS
> | servers.
> 
> If OASIS provided usable facilities for things like modifiable
> files at persistent locations, this policy would merely be
> unenforceable, but given the complete lack of such facilities,
> it's simply absurd.

And providing such facilities does not seem like rocket science to
me, despite whatever other applications (Kavi or whatever) might
be set up on the web server.

All that's needed is for each TC to have a user account
provisioned on the web server host, with the home directory for
that account showing up at http://www.oasis-open.org/<tcname>/,
and then for some method to be provided for each TC to self-manage
the content there -- to be able to put files into that directory
remotely. It seems like the modern way to do that is via scp, but
I plain-old FTP or a browser-based upload form would work too.

That's the way this kind of need is addressed most other places.
Why should it be difficult to provide something similar for TCs to
self-manage content at the OASIS site?

> | All web pages, documents, and email archives of all TCs and SCs
> | shall be publicly visible.
> 
> Extend this visibility policy to materials located outside of the
> OASIS site and you have accomplished everything useful in this
> area.  All that's left is an obsessive territoriality that seeks
> to maintain illusory control at the cost of real functionality.

Right -- The harder that it is for a TC to keep content organized
and up to date on the OASIS web server, the less likely that it is
that the TC will do it.

Let TCs host content on whatever host they want, with the
requirement that they must proviide a link to it from the OASIS
site, and you're giving them greater control, ownership, and
responsibility for keeping it organized and up to date.

Looking it at it from a end-user perspective (which it seem like
we should be) -- end-users don't care where the content is stored
as long as they can find it. If a link from the OASIS site for a
TC takes them to a different host instead of to a different
subdirectory at the OASIS site, what's the difference?

smime.p7s