Reopening tidy/untidy decision

Achieving concensus is a difficult task at best, and this particular
issue of tidy/untidy literals has unfortunately plagued us more than any
would have liked.

The Chair chose a method for the Working Group to make a decision
reguarding the tidy/untidy debate [1]. From the minutes and subsequent
discussions, the Group still seems genuinely divided on this issue. I
respect and support the Chair's attempt to close the issue. As staff
contact, however, I have concerns with a split decision especially when
the group has a responsibility to convince not just itself but also the
larger RDF community of the technical merit.

As the Activity Lead, I have an additional concern and as such have
asked the Chairs to re-open this decision for discussion.  In particular
I'm concerned with the additional work this decision will require of
this group to meet Candidate Recommendation critera.  Time is of the
essence. The RDFCore Working Group was initially chartered to run from
April 2001 to early 2002. Our charter has already been extended
significantly; that extension period is now drawing to a close.

I am preparing the case for extending the RDFCore group through the
remainder of 2002 and into early 2003. This takes us a long way beyond
the original agreed plan for the group. Delays to the completion of this
work have affects beyond the group and its hardworking members. Other
specifications make reference to RDF, other groups are basing their work
on RDF. We need to finish the stablization of the core RDF
specifications as soon as possible.

It is important that the group specify a satisfactory engineering
design taking into account many contraints. I ask that working group
members when considering the issues to bear in mind both the technical
characteristics of the two options discussed and the potential impact of
each on the schedule of the working group. This includes practicalities
such as the impact on the N-Triples design, the impact on the RDFCore
test case collection, current implementations and interoperability phase
for Candidate Recommendation.

Our deadline has passed. Please look again at this decision and give
careful consideration to the impact on the WG schedule.

-- 
eric miller                              http://www.w3.org/people/em/
semantic web activity lead               http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
w3c world wide web consortium            http://www.w3.org/

Received on Thursday, 26 September 2002 14:59:59 UTC