[xtm-wg] Re: From the chair of TopicMaps.Org

[Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@ms.lt>]

Thank you, Eric,
for such a thoughtful and public letter.

At the Austin meeting we pondered the future of TopicMaps.Org, and our
charter. I would like to see us move towards increasing, rather than
decreasing, openness and inclusion through the Web as to what's going on
within our group.  Too often, it's impossible to know what's going on
from just our letters here.  I didn't attend in Paris, and felt
completely in the dark.  I think your letter here is very constructive
in tone.

My investment in TopicMaps may be the least of all of us, so I write
with that qualification.  My feeling, though, at the Austin meeting was
that, with the exception of Michel and Steve, we seemed quite willing to
allow a different group of people to define the Topic Map Query
Language.  But furthermore, the people participating in TQML seemed to
appreciate that the ability to decide "What questions can be answered
about a Topic Map?" actually can have tremendous influence as to "What
do each of the concepts of Topic Maps actually mean?"  In other words,
the people who define something like SQL have a tremendous practical and
theoretical influence as to "What do each of the concepts of a
relational database actually mean?", which ones are important, and why. 
I could understand that our apparent willingness to cede such important
ground would be difficult to stomach for anybody who feels that there
are critically important ideas left to define, or even sees a battle
going on to define these ideas.

I think at some point, however, that there is something pathological
about our current organization that people so regularly "participate" by
voting with their feet.  It's a very crude form of communication
(violence is, too).  Breaking off the channel isn't a way of getting
across any kind of subtle information.  I think it would have been (or
at least should have been) much more productive if Michel and Steve had
stayed through that meeting.  Maybe resignation should take two letters,
in writing, with an interval of two weeks.  Submitting the first letter
could be a way of marching out, but still continue to vote and
participate.  Maybe there is another way to steal some of that thunder.

I also think that we give proper credit to Michel and Steve (as children
might do to parents) without yet fathoming that many of the effects of
their leadership have yet to come.  For example, they were extremely
far-sighted to have us spend an unusually long time on our charter "so
that we would make rapid progress".  We now see that this has proven
correct.  Also, I think they were adamant that users play an equal if
not greater role than vendors.  We're now seeing us drift more and more
to vendors.  Our vendors are playing an extremely helpful and
labor-intensive role, and it makes sense that they would want greater
voting representation, the ability to have several voting members. 
Their energy is so central to our movement, however, I think that we
must find new ways to balance that.  Otherwise, we are drifting to
becoming a "more professional" organization.  One way to balance this
would be to find ways to formalize some means of participation by people
who have been participating through our discussion group here, to
distribute authority and be more inclusive.  How might we do that
without becoming less focused and less efficient?

Michel and Steve, I hope you might always advise us, and always be open
to storming back in.

Eric, Thank you.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@ms.lt

Eric Freese wrote:
> 
> An open letter to the topic map community:
> 
> First of all, this message has been cross-posted, my apologies if you
> receive this message more than once.
> 
> TopicMaps.Org has remained pretty much silent on these lists following the
> tumult which has occurred over the past few weeks. On my part, this has been
> due to other pressing matters as well as taking the time to think through an
> appropriate response to some of the statements that have been made. It is my
> hope that cooler heads will prevail in the future.
> 
> I believe now is an appropriate time to make a statement.  Any statements
> made here are my own as a participating member but are given from the point
> of view of my role as chair of TopicMaps.Org.
> 
> I wish to thank both Steve Newcomb and Michel Biezunski for all the work
> they have done to bring topic maps to fruition. They have both given
> immeasurable amounts of time, finances, brainpower, blood, sweat, and tears
> to make topic maps a reality. ALL of us in the topic map community, and
> perhaps in the greater knowledge management community, owe them a great deal
> and I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge their work. Thank
> you gentlemen!
> 
> I think it is fair to say the TopicMaps.Org itself would not exist if it
> were not for the efforts of Steve and Michel. The fact that we were able to
> organize AND publish a spec in less than 12 months is astounding, even in
> the age of the Web. The existence of TopicMaps.Org is an example of Steve
> and Michel's vision and its continued work will hopefully be a lasting
> legacy to their efforts. I believe we can continue to fight a worthy battle
> after their departure from our ranks.
> 
> I am very pleased to see that they are continuing their work on the
> processing model which was delivered in draft along with the AG Review draft
> of the XTM specification. Due to time and resource constraints, the
> processing model has not gotten the attention the specification proper
> received, but we are working to remedy that situation and plan to have some
> exciting announcements in the near future.
> 
> The email snippets below are from Michel's email message dated March 21,
> 2001 with which Steve later agreed.
> 
> > > - At the January Meeting of the XTM Authoring Group, there were
> > >   disagreements coming from the Group and Steve and I were denied
> > >   authority to continue the work as editors, in a normal way. Any
> > >   change that we would ever want to introduce for the sake of
> > >   consistency had to be submitted to the group for vote. Since this
> > >   process was going to delay the work of the group, I have preferred
> > >   resigning as editor in favor of those who were able to perform this
> > >   task with more authority. To me, the most important was to have the
> > >   specification be published as quickly as possible, while the windows
> > >   of opportunity were still open.
> 
> The TopicMaps.Org process is stated in the charter. A publication becomes
> final when it is approved by 2/3 of the participating members. As chair
> (acting) at the Paris meeting, I ruled that a qualifying vote did not occur
> at the Dallas meeting (not enough members present) or at any time prior to
> December 4 or at any time before the Paris meeting.
> 
> The process that is in place is the result of work done in the first three
> meetings of the group. Steve and Michel deserve a great deal of the credit
> for putting such a revolutionary charter and process into place. Over the
> months, we have tweaked it a little, but the basic core has served us well
> thus far.
> 
> > > - My resignation had an unexpected result that the process went
> > >   quicker and the work for publishing the full version of XTM 1.0 was
> > >   completed. The new editors have worked very hard to
> > >   make it possible. The decision to transfer the editorship to a new
> > >   team should therefore be considered positive in all respects.
> 
> Yes, there were disagreements although I believe that by the end of the
> meeting there was a clear vision as to how to continue forward. Steve and
> Michel's resignations jolted the rest of the committee into considering that
> we might have to carry the banner. Fortunately other people were willing to
> step up and fill the void left by the resignations. This is one area where
> the group has been blessed. We met our timeline and produced a quality
> product.
> 
> > > - Unfortunately, several errors appear to have been made. The names of
> > >   the original editors and co-editors have been replaced by the names
> > >   of the newly appointed editors, causing confusion among the
> > >   community. The published subject indicator list which was announced
> > >   in December as dependable, and not subject to changes that might
> > >   cause referencing documents to lose their value was shortened and
> > >   most of them were removed. The Processing Model, published as a draft
> > >   as part of the December 4 deliverables, was removed and replaced by
> > >   an annex F, "Processing Requirements", which was incompatible and is
> > >   judged misleading by the previous editors, because it emphasizes
> > >   syntactical aspects without telling anything about the actual
> > >   meaning of the specification and how applications are supposed to
> > >   understand it. Furthermore, annex F is presented as "informative",
> > >   while the conformance clause has been changed in such a way as to
> > >   require all XTM applications and topic maps to conform to annex F.
> 
> When the spec was published in February it was decided that the names of the
> editors at the time of publication should be listed on the specification.
> This will be the practice into the future. This was not done in order to
> steal anyone's thunder but rather to identify the points of contact for
> technical questions or comments. The spec is a publication of TopicMaps.Org
> as an organization, and thus is not owned by a select group of people.
> 
> When I published the result of the ratification vote I only provided the
> voting results, not who voted which way.  However, looking in the mail list
> archives will show that the lone dissenting vote was from Murray Altheim.
> Every other participating member at the time voted for the specification,
> including Steve and Michel. If there are errors in the spec, we all share
> equal blame. I certainly hope that all the participating members reviewed
> the document as closely as I did before casting their "YES" votes. That
> being said - if there are perceived errors in the spec, I would very much
> appreciate it if those errors were identified so that they can be resolved.
> 
> A decision that was made in Paris was that the processing model would not be
> ready for publication given the timeline presented. This included dropping
> templates from the specification and PSI documents. The changes to the PSI
> list were made in accordance with that decision since it seemed reasonable
> to drop PSIs which were not going to be covered in that version of the spec.
> It has been said that to do so makes the current XTM spec incomplete. I
> would maintain that it no less complete than the ISO standard, which does
> not have any PSIs declared for it.
> 
> The PSI list on December 4 Core document also was missing some very
> necessary PSIs including PSIs for "topic", "association", and "occurrence".
> I don't think there is any debate as to whether these subjects are also
> required. So to say that the Dec. 4 deliverable was not subject to change
> is, in my view, an inaccurate statement.
> 
> Annex F was added in order to define the requirements for how topic map
> applications would handle specific rules and cases within topic map
> processing. I don't believe that it was meant to replace the process model
> at all. I will ask the current editors to look into the statements about the
> status of annex F and the conformance clause to determine whether there are
> any inconsistencies.
> 
> The Dec. 4 processing model is still posted on the TopicMaps.Org web site in
> draft form. As far as I know it has always been there.
> 
> > >   I decided to resign altogether when I learned that a plan had been
> > >   put in motion whereby the processing model for the XTM syntax would
> > >   not be developed independently by the XTM group, but rather by an
> > >   ISO-based group, under ISO rules, beginning with a requirements
> > >   analysis and ending at some indefinite future date with an ISO
> > >   standard query language for topic maps. My understanding of the
> > >   mission of the XTM group was inconsistent with this plan: to publish
> > >   a Web-oriented specification for topic maps, and to do it more
> > >   quickly than any other standardization process could do it, mostly
> > >   by relying heavily on work already done over the past several
> > >   years.
> 
> The statement about the processing model being controlled by ISO is entirely
> inaccurate and I wish to clear this up once and for all. At our meeting in
> Austin, we had in attendance some invited guests (approved by the
> membership). The work on TMQL, on both the ISO and XTM sides, is to be based
> on the XTM processing model, since there isn't one for the ISO standard.
> During the meeting we were looking for requirements and use cases for TMQL
> that were in addition to the requirements that would come from the
> processing model. At one point in the meeting, the question was raised as to
> the nature of the meeting. I stated that it was a joint discussion of TMQL.
> Perhaps this was an inaccurate statement or had ramifications of which I was
> not aware. At no time did TopicMaps.Org hand control of the processing model
> over to the ISO process, nor did it ever intend to. From what I know of the
> ISO process, I can't see that we ever will. The people in attendance were
> not there under the auspices of ISO except in a liaison capacity. If there
> was a problem in their being there, it should have been brought to my
> attention in a manner that would allow me to resolve the situation. It would
> have been a simple matter to ask them to leave - other meeting facilities
> were available for them to use.
> 
> > >   All these factors prevented me from having any clear vision on how
> > >   to go further. Topic Maps have been receiving quite a bit of
> > >   interest lately and there is a strong desire to harmonize with the
> > >   W3C's RDF recommendation. I remain convinced that if all people
> > >   involved in the process recognize the interest of agreeing on a
> > >   single way of understanding of what an interchangeable topic map
> > >   really means (this might take some time), all opinions should be
> > >   expressed. Steve Newcomb and I are continuing to contribute the
> > >   discussion in several ways. We are proposing a graph-based
> > >   processing model (see http://www.topicmaps.net) a study on RDF and
> > >   Topic Maps, and other relevant work.
> 
> TopicMaps.Org will continue to work with W3C in some fashion to work toward
> the XTM/RDF harmonization demanded in Montreal last summer. I am working
> closely with Eric Miller (now of W3C) to determine the best way to do just
> that. The graph-based model being worked on by Steve and Michel will be
> useful in that process. My hope is that this graph-based model works not
> only for topic maps but also for RDF and other knowledge interchange models.
> I can't think of a better way to begin the process of building globally
> interchangeable knowledge.
> 
> > >   Although the current situation is far from ideal, it can also be
> > >   interpreted as a sign of good health that many initiatives, coming
> > >   from different people, are out there, everybody trying to convince
> > >   others of the interest of his/her approach to topic maps. The
> > >   discussions I have been having recently make me optimistic about a
> > >   positive outcome. It looks like there are many people who are
> > >   looking for improving consistency between the various approaches.
> 
> I wholeheartedly agree that the current situation is not ideal. It is also
> not the end of the world. It has caused confusion among the topic map
> community and I'm willing to guess, will for some time in the future.
> TopicMaps.Org is continuing to work to meet the goals set forth in the
> charter and will be looking for ways to build the topic map community in the
> future.
> 
> > >   I intend to continue participating in the discussion.
> 
> I welcome and encourage this from Steve, Michel and anyone else who is
> willing to keep this effort moving forward.
> 
> I would also welcome Steve and Michel back into the TopicMaps.Org fold.
> Perhaps things have not gone as anticipated, but there is still a lot of
> work to be done and I continue to believe that a reunified force would be
> something to be reckoned with. However, I also respect their decision and
> look forward to seeing their work continue in whatever form and forum.
> 
> Thanks for listening/reading.
> 
> If you have any questions feel free to contact me at eric@isogen.com.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Eric Freese
> Chair - TopicMaps.Org
>

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