James,
Your statement:
"OASIS does not believe that it has much ability to constrain or limit the
actions of its various committees" pretty well surfaces the general issue I have
with efforts to work on standards in a loosely controlled organization.
IMO, OASIS should not view itself and should not be viewed as a standards
setting organization. Rather, I feel they should view themselves and be
viewed as a research organization. Similarly, I feel standards setting
organizations should not view themselves and should not be viewed as research
organizations.
Research is
fostered by exercising minimal control over the work program and by encouraging
competition. Standards are fostered by exercising strong control over
the work program, and by encouraging cooperation.
Research generally precedes and feeds the
standardization process. The standardization process generally takes as
input the output of multiple research efforts, and through a mixed process of
compromise, evolution, and refinement reaches consensus agreement on new
standards.
I am suspicious
of efforts that mix square pegs and holes together with round pegs and
holes. I am likewise suspicious of efforts to eliminate one or the other
shapes.
Cheers,
Bob
-----Original
Message-----
From: James Bryce Clark
[mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002
4:04 AM
To: ;
;
Subject: [ubl-comment]
Fwd: Re: UBL and CEFACT
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 23:48:30
-0800
To: "Kenji Itoh" <>
From: James Bryce
Clark <>
Subject: Re: UBL and CEFACT
Cc:
, ,
, , ,
, , ,
, , ,
Kenji, thank you very much for your
comments. It is my hope that the UBL and CEFACT representatives
present in Geneva will be able to work out a way to present and pursue their
efforts as complementary and unified. I have two primary
concerns.
First, the window of opportunity for obtaining industry and
user support for ebXML or any other web services schema is this year.
Another year of continued divergent efforts, in appearance or reality, will
impair our ability to promote a unified nonproprietary eBusiness
solution.
Second, the actual technical differences
between the two approaches are not great. If put into the same
room, I believe the authors and experts would be able to resolve issues and
forge consensual answers. By continuing to develop in parallel, we are
encouraging differing opinions to avoid reconciliation. In my view we
have still failed to bring together the different opinions about modeling
and implementation that were raised in Tokyo in 2000. Both viewpoints
have merit: our project is unlikely to thrive unless we have
both forward compatibility with fully-modeled, object-valid systems
as well as smooth backwards compatibility with simple deployment of
document-based messages such as the EDIFACT set.
Ray, Klaus
and I did discuss the overlapping work issues with the ebXML Joint
Coordinating Committee on several occasions. I believe that OASIS
continues to be committed to ebXML, but the May 2001 MoU with CEFACT is not
very clear or helpful in defining the relationship, and OASIS does not
believe that it has much ability to constrain or limit the actions of its
various committees. I am confident that OASIS will cooperate with
whatever resolution the UBL TC itself reaches. We felt the best
approach was to take up the issue directly with the UBL team and its
leadership.
I am hopeful that the discussions this week will result
in joint work rather than continued parallel tracks.
Best
regards Jamie Clark
~ James Bryce Clark
~
American Bar Association Business Law Subcommittee on E-Commerce
~
www.abanet.org/buslaw/cyber/ecommerce/ecommerce.html
~
1 310 293 6739
