UBL and UN/CEFACT

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

Hello UBL TC,

As current voting members will recall, we have been working for
several years to come to an agreement with UN/CEFACT regarding a
transfer of the UBL activity to the UN.  We covered this in some
detail during our last face-to-face TC meeting in Ottawa.  The
outcome of that meeting was a rejection of the planning document
we were provided with just before the meeting.

Over the last month, your negotiators have met several times with
their UN/CEFACT counterparts and also discussed the issues at
length with UN/CEFACT leadership at the recent UN/CEFACT Forum in
Lyon.  I am now satisfied that both sides have moved as far as
possible toward a set of terms that might work.  Those terms are
summed up in the documents attached (coded as usual in a zip file
whose extension should be changed from "zzz" to "zip" before
unpacking).

It should be understood that these documents are formally just the
output of a small group appointed to create a plan that might find
favor on both sides.  The next step is to gain the approval of
OASIS management and you, the UBL TC membership, before taking
this further.  No attempt has been made in these documents to
specify the plan in detail; that will come when and if you agree
to the broader outline of the proposed agreement.

Please consider this matter and be ready to discuss it during next
week's UBL Pacific and Atlantic TC meetings.  (Due to travel,
there will not be a Europe/Asia call next week, so please plan to
attend one of the other two.)  Since this matter is best discussed
interactively, I would encourage you to save your comments for the
phone conferences.

Jon Bosak
Chair, OASIS UBL TC

un-ubl.zzz