[sc34wg3] The Norwegian National Body position on ISO 13250

[Michel Biezunski]

Mary,

I would like to understand better what you mean.

> You said it better than I ever could have.

What do you mean by "it"?

> What you describe is what we
> hope will happen in Japan.

What do you mean by "what you describe"?

> It is very important that SAM and XTM Syntax
> move to CD.

This is procedural. What about the question I
asked to Steve Pepper and that he has not answered
yet: what is the nature of the incompatibilities
that several software products are exhibiting
re: Topic Maps?

Should we try to review the standard in order
to accommodate this new reality of people outside
the group claiming they are doing topic maps by
looking at what they have done, or should we say:
everybody who was not in the committee should not
be allowed to call their products topic maps?
What kind of standard are we doing? Closed or
open?

> Then we begin the translations and software companies will
> begin to look at them.

The whole point is that software companies are
already doing topic maps. My point is that we
need to look at what they are doing. It might
happen that some software is really important for
the market and that it's good that it can claim
compatibility with topic maps. But we don't know
yet, because Steve Pepper has not given the information
we need to assess that.

> We need to show the Japanese government
> that we have
> standards that are actually progressing and moving to ballot.

Does the Japanese government want open standards
or closed standards? This is the whole issue.

> It helps
> companies get topic map related projects.

Do we want to reject some already existing projects
because of the new conformance rules?

> I'll say it again, we need to demonstrate that our standards work is
> actually leading to benefits for Japan.

What are the benefits for Japan? Does Japan need software
or does Japan need to model information? Why would Japan
be a country where information modeling is not considered
a must? Is there something in the Japanese culture that
I don't know of that would make this seem obvious to
a Japanese and that I would miss? Please explain I want
to know more about this.

> It is very hard to do so, if we
> only continue to do remodeling on a model, or keep one model on
> hold until
> we do remodeling over and over and then change the names and terms in the
> model, etc.

What in the existing standard is insufficient
to give credibility to launching topic map
applications in Japan? There are many cases
where people are going to Topic Maps right
now because they know it's already a standard.
Thanks to that fact, we should be able to
do all the progress we need to make the
standard evolve to cover today's new needs.
This is all what this discussion is about.
We have what we need to go forward. The
only thing that is missing is a consensus.
It's part of the ISO process to build such
a consensus. This is the part which takes
the most time. I don't think there is a
way to short-circuit it. And I am not convinced
up to this date there is any convincing reason
to do so. Please try to convince me why you
think differently. Be very specific.

Michel
===================================
Michel Biezunski
Coolheads Consulting
402 85th Street #5C
Brooklyn, New York 11209
Email:mb@coolheads.com
Web  :http://www.coolheads.com
Voice: (718) 921-0901
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