Re: confusion about the WG issue process

At 9:45 AM -0400 7/4/02, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
>From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.umd.edu>
>Subject: Re: confusion about the WG issue process
>Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 18:46:30 -0400
>
>>  Peter - since I have no clue what your questions mean, I find myself
>>  at a loss to answer them.  The issue process is clear, issues are
>>  opened by the chairs when needed as agreed to by the WG.  The WG
>>  decided that the 3 working drafts we release will all point at Mike
>>  Dean's reference document, which in turn has pointers to raised
>>  issues for those language features which correspond to ones where we
>>  have something on our issue list.  As per both our charter, our
>>  issues process, and convention -- when we've not yet agreed on a
>>  change, we use the DAML+OIL solution and include a pointer to the
>>  open issue. 
>
>This would mean that there is no OWL Lite, because this issue (5.2) is not
>recorded as closed.
>

no, it means we've not yet determined if this is the final decision. 
We are releasing a WORKING DRAFT that represents the current state of 
our thinking.

>
>>  As far as I can tell Mike has done an admirable job of
>>  doing this, the group reviewed this at the f2f, and as far as I can
>>  tell there is no reason to do anything at the moment other than
>>  exactly what we are doing.
>
>I disagree with the last portion of this.  Both the feature specification
>and the abstract syntax take different stances than those taken in DAML+OIL
>that are not supported by closed issues.  This seems to me to run counter
>to the issue process.

no, they are supported by RAISED issues - the issues are closed 
before we go to last call and/or candidate rec, not before we release 
anything

>
>>    Note: we make it very clear that any issue that is not yet resolved
>>  is, indeed, not yet resolved and thus I have trouble understanding
>>  what the problem is you point out.
>
>The problem is that documents that are heading towards WD status take
>stances different from those taken in DAML+OIL that are not supported by
>closed issues.  Is this allowed?

absolutely

>[...]
>
>>  >So, I am asking for clarification on how the issue process is supposed
>>  >to work with respect to the collection of documents being produced.
>>  >Is it OK for an appointed editor to produce documents that assume
>>  >particular resolutions of non-closed issues?  Is it OK for an
>>  >appointed editor to produce document that assume particular
>>  >resolutions of non-closed, non-open issues?
>
>I need an answer to these questions. Let me restate and combine them:
>
>   Can a WD in this WG be produced that has a different stance from that
>   taken in DAML+OIL without there being a closed issue that supports this
>   change?

yes

>
>>  >I am also asking for clarification of how the issue process is
>>  >supposed to work in general.  How are issues opened? 
>
>I also need an answer to this question.  Let me restate it slightly:
>
>   What can I do to open issues?

you cannot open issues.  You can raise new ones, or request of Guus 
and I that we open existing ones.

>
>
>In essence I am asking whether the issue process is a joke or not.  (And
>this is no joke.)  I have tried to stay within the issue process as much as
>possible, but now I don't see how to stay within the issue process as it is
>currently being implemented and still make reasonable progress.

I think you are misconstruing the process, since we're modeling on a 
process that seems to work just fine.

It is closing the issues that we need to move on faster - but first 
was identifying them and tying them to our evolving documents.

-- 
Professor James Hendler				  hendler@cs.umd.edu
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742	  240-731-3822 (Cell)
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Friday, 5 July 2002 16:17:01 UTC