Re: [ubl-dev] UBL for storing accounting data

[Martin Kleppmann <martin@eptcomputing.com>]

Thanks for your responses!

I did look at XBRL, but I had difficulty recognising anything in it  
which would be relevant to me. A lot of it seems to apply to publicly  
listed companies with regulatory reporting requirements. That is a  
world very different from my own; I consider a company with 10 people  
and $1m turnover to be big!

What I am trying to do is really quite lightweight, and I don't want  
to introduce any more complexity than absolutely necessary. In many  
ways I even find UBL too heavyweight and complex, but I appreciate the  
amount of thought which has gone into it, and by trimming it to a  
subset I think we could make it quite suitable for small businesses.

Some more thoughts/questions/comments:

* What is the patent situation of UBL? There is some legalese on RAND/ 
RF modes on http://www.oasis-open.org/who/intellectualproperty.php --  
which mode applies to UBL? It goes without saying that even the remote  
possibility of licensing fees would be a showstopper for a free and  
open source implementation.

* I think the UBL documentation could do with being more extensive,  
and in particular more transparent. Ken, the files you provide are a  
useful reference; I think potential UBL adopters would find it a lot  
easier though if there were a few examples and a bit more explanation  
for each element. I may look if I can set up something a bit like a  
Wiki at some point.

* If I join OASIS, where do my membership fees go? I'm not used to  
paying for the privilege of sitting on a committee, so I'd at least  
like to know that the money is going into something useful :-)

Thanks again for your help. I'll start writing up a few ideas, and pop  
back here from time to time if I have questions about the meaning of  
certain UBL constructs, if you don't mind.

Martin