Re: planning RIF's future

> Looks like a good plan, but whether 1 year is enough depends on the
> speed of the progress.  As you know, sometimes we hit unexpected snags.
> 
> I have some questions/comments:
> 
> 1.  You wrote:
>         - BLD, DTB, and SWC  -- finish up what're working on now;
> 
>     Was the omission of FLD intentional?  Did you mean BLD/FLD?
>     What about UC&R?

I left out FLD and UCR, accidentally, because I don't think if them as
bearing directly on implementations and user functionality, and that's
what I was thinking about.

I'm not really sure how FLD should be handled procedurally.  While it is
used normatively in defining a dialect, does it make sense to say FLD,
by itself, is (or is not) normative, or some implementation is/is-not
compliant with FLD?  If it's not normative in itself, we may want to
just publish it as a WG Note, which does not need the full level of
external review that a Recommendation does.  (We have the same option
with UCR.)  In both cases, if we want to update and republish a newer
Note later, that's pretty easy.  This makes sense if people aren't
actually using it as a spec for interoperability, relying on it being
stable.  (as I say that, I'm thinking FLD probably does need to be a
Rec, but I'm concerned about calling it "done" before LP, FOL, etc are
farther along.)

> 2.  When you are talking about 1 year, do you mean May 2009?

Yes, through May 31, 2009.

>     Is it a kind of 2nd phase?

Kind of, but I think "Phase I" / "Phase II" distinction in the Charter
isn't very helpful at this point.  I think it makes sense to just focus
on what folks need and we can accomplish in the next year.  It may be, I
suppose, that we end up required to do some kind of more-strategic
longer-term plan, but I'd rather avoid that.

> 3.  Getting LP + FOL + PRD dialects to the last call in < 1 year is very
>     ambitious, but I assume that we can get an extension on that.
>     (In fact, LP and FOL are mainly done as part of FLD, but significant
>     work is still ahead.)

Yeah.  There are several unknowns here.  I think if everything goes
well, and we keep up the pace, this plan is doable.  I'm concerned that
if we slow down very much at all (because we're each putting less into
RIF, because we get lost in unimportant details, or because we get too
perfectionist), we'll start to lose the participants who really need to
get something usable out of this (cf Gary's comment [1]).

       -- Sandro

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2008May/0078.html

Received on Thursday, 8 May 2008 17:30:30 UTC