[tm-pubsubj] mixed feelings

[Bernard Vatant <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>]

Folks

I've got mixed feelings those days about our TC work.

We've got lately lively and interesting debates about paradigmatic, generic, genetic or
distributed PSIs ... but that does not make our practical work move forward an inch I'm
afraid. A month has passed since Seattle meeting, and we have still that bunch of issues
posted in the current Deliverable 1 version, and not a heap of proposals to address those
issues so far.

I've been trying to review the document those days, and figure how to make things move
forward, and all I got to is adding those new questions, about non topic maps applications
of PSIs, or distributed PSIs ...

Some thoughts

I wonder if we've not been far too deep into the details of the "what and how" without
having a real agreement on "why and what for". Those have been expressed in a too fuzzy
way so far. In fact, I think there is a deep, but not clearly expressed, disagreement on
objectives between

(1) those who consider PSIs essentially as necessary logistics for interoperability and
wide-scale support for topic maps technology - letting the use of PSIs outside TM universe
as a secondary and minor objective.

(2) those who consider topic maps like maybe the reference early users, but only one among
many technologies that could use PSIs.

I've always been implicitly, and will certainly be more and more explicitly, on the (2)
side. Remember I proposed the name of the TC to be "Published Subjects" without explicit
reference to topic maps. But I must acknowledge I am maybe pushing against the majority of
TC opinions there. In the first co-call on October 30, if I trust the minutes, the
consensus was rather on (1) - Quote from the minutes below.

"Bernard asked the committee to consider whether Published Subjects should be created with
other applications in mind or be solely dedicated to Topic Maps. After some discussion, it
was determined that the focus should be the creation of Published Subjects for Topic Maps,
and let initiative to other groups for other applications."

But at this meeting, only 5 of the 11 current TC members were present.

So, questions:

1. Have our objectives been defined clearly enough?

2. If yes, are we going the right way so far, or are we misled?

3. Do we have to reconsider the objectives, in the light of recent debates, or do we stick
to the initial ones?

Thanks for your feedback


Bernard