RE: [unitsml] Current Meeting Ends Wednesday - Please Participate

["Craig Seymour" <craig.seymour@grantadesign.com>]

I'll add my tuppenceworth here.  The OASIS Materials (MatML) Technical
Committee was recently disbanded by OASIS due to lack of activity.  This
lack of activity was in no small part due to the obstacles we found
meeting the final step in the public approval process, which is that 15%
of the OASIS membership must vote on the standard and 70% (IIRC) of
those voters must approve the standard.

Our problem was, of course, that very few of the OASIS membership have
any interest or expertise in materials data, and we didn't have the
resource to canvas the ones that do - for example Intel use Granta's
data materials data management tools, but the members of Intel currently
in OASIS would be entirely unaware of this; we would have had to
approach our direct contacts in Intel, get them to join OASIS, become
voting members and vote.  We would then have to repeat the process until
we reached the 15% figure.

Units have a wider applicability than materials, so UnitsML should have
less of a problem.  However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the first
public vote failed to approve the standard.  How many of us have voted
on some of the more esoteric B2B or encryption standards that have been
through OASIS in the last few years?

I have no experience at all with the ISO process.  When and if we pick
up MatML again, I expect that we'll take it though ASTM.

Craig

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gary W. Kramer [mailto:gary.kramer@nist.gov]
> Sent: 01 July 2008 23:33
> To: carlisle@nist.gov; unitsml@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [unitsml] Current Meeting Ends Wednesday - Please
Participate
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I just finished listening to the audio from the recent UnitsML TC
meeting
> and
> have a couple of comments.
> 
> I was somewhat surprised to hear Simon say that he can validate the
> UnitsML
> schema against the UnitsML NDRs.  Does this mean that someone has
encoded
> all
> the NDRs to make this possible?  Or am I missing something?
> 
> My second comment concerns the migration to ISO instead of going
through
> OASIS
> to turn UnitsML into a standard.  Are we really sure that we
understand
> the
> OASIS process?  From what I heard in this teleconference, it would
seem
> that
> given the number of standards being developed and the wide range of
those
> topics that it would be so difficult to find enough folks (vote
holders)
> with
> the time and expertise to vet all the standards coming out of
committees
> that
> the whole OASIS approval process would grind to a halt.  Perhaps we
should
> ask
> Jamie to attend the next meeting and explain candidly how this next
step
> works.  I know we eventually want to take UnitsML to ISO, but I'm
worried
> about the international politics component that often seems so
prevalent
> in
> that organization might be a bigger burden and even more difficult to
> surmount
> than the OASIS approval process.  I guess that I find it difficult to
> believe
> that a committee-recommended-standard candidate would be rejected by
OASIS
> just because the vote holders are too busy, too inexperienced with the
> topic,
> or too indifferent to bother to vote on it.  We're talking about a
> technical
> organization not the US Congress (or my home-owners' association)
here...
> 
> Cheers,
> Gary
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > As a reminder, the current UnitsML TC meeting ends Wednesday,
> > July 2.  Please participate by email if you have not already done
> > so.  (Even a "no comment" remark will do.)
> >
> 
> 
> >
> 
> Notes from the teleconference portion are here:
> 
> 
> > http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/unitsml/
> > download.php/28681/telecon20080625.pdf
> >
> 
> 
> >
> 
> And the audio can be heard here:
> >
> 
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/downl
> > oad.php/28678/20080625_8kbps.wma
> >
> 
> 
> >
> 
> -Mark Carlisle
> 
> 
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