- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 09:57:17 -0400
- To: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@allette.com.au>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
Rick, Before responding to your note, let me formally convey to you news that I infer you have already seen, perhaps from reading the draft of our minutes. For the benefit of those who may find this note in years to come, this is in response to your request [1] that the TAG: "instruct, influence or otherwise encourage the XML Schema Working Group to put XSD 1.1 on hold and instead to work on a radical relayering into a two-layer model." I responded shortly thereafter, explaining what I thought were the pertinent process issues [2], in particular, quoting from my response: > Rich Jelliffe writes: > > > The appropriate channel for escalation in this case, as I understand > > it, is the TAG. > > In short, I'm not convinced that's formally true, but I'm certainly glad > to try and get the TAG to play a constructive role, > particularly if other > TAG members are inclined to engage in this issue. I believe the process > requires that the TAG vote on whether to undertake this as an > issue, and I will schedule the appropriate vote shortly. In fact, the TAG discussed your request on three occasions, on the teleconferences of May [14], May 21 [4], and May 28 [5]. On May 28th, 8 out of 9 TAG members were present (T.V. Raman was the only one missing.) In a poll at the end of our discussion, only 1 out of the 8 members present supported the TAG pursuing this as an issue, and so we will not. Let me now respond to your note, with the assumption that it is in fact refering to the decision described above: > I will not pursue this any further here now. Thank you for being clear on that. > I am in no way satisfied with the result That is understandable, though I hope you'll feel that we were at least diligent in promoting discussion. Speaking for myself, I was never entirely convinced that the TAG was the best venue for considering this, but as chair I was glad to give it careful consideration. As you are aware, the Schema working group has opened a formal issue [6] in their bug tracking system. I believe that this is the appropriate framework in which to pursue your concern. Note that, should the issue not be otherwise resolved and should you decide to pursue it as XSD proceeds toward Recommendation, our charter formally provides the W3C Director (Tim) the opportunity to consult with the TAG should he wish to. > which I am sure was reached in good faith; Thank you, I believe it was. > I am sure that all the TAG members recognize that its large > overlap with XSD WG members effectively preludes it from > reaching a consensus much different > from that of the XSD WG. I'm afraid that I just don't think this is fair. Yes, at least two of us on the TAG (Henry and I) have a long history with XSD. There are also other TAG members who have been vocal, now and in the past, in sharing some of your concerns about about the merits of XSD. Your request did NOT fall victim to consensus being blocked by the minority of us who have strong ties to the XSD work. Of the 8 members on the call when the choice was made, only 1 spoke in favor of the TAG undertaking this issue. Frankly, I believe we bent over backward to avoid the appearance or the reality of bias. I can tell you that I received at least one private comment from a TAG member who has no particular affection for XSD, asking why I had scheduled telcon time on this, when no TAG member had requested that we do (our custom is to try to resolve such things in email, as telcon time is scarce.) I pointed out that I felt I had a conflict of interest in declining to schedule discussion, and so I wanted to be sure your concerns were heard by all. I think the minutes will reflect that those with concerns about XSD and sympathy for your concerns had ample opportunity to weigh in. Furthermore, on the May 21, call an informal survey of the 6 members present revealed NO support for undertaking the issue. Realizing that at least one missing member might be supportive of your request, I scheduled the additional discussion on the 28th, a quite unusual step for a decision of this scale. I did that to avoid even the possibility that a larger turnout would yield a different result. In short, I think we have taken unusal pains to avoid either the appearance or the reality of bias, and to avoid having a minority block the will of the majority. By our charter, it takes only a simple majority for the TAG to undertake work on an issue, and in this case we were not even close. This is not a situation where consensus was blocked by a vocal or potentially biased minority. I hope this will allay your concerns on that score. Thank you. Noah [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2009May/0021.html [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2009May/0026.html [3] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2009/05/14-minutes#item05 [4] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2009/05/21-minutes#item05 [5] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2009/05/28-minutes#item05 [6] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=6940 -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 -------------------------------------- Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@allette.com.au> 06/02/2009 02:15 AM To: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com cc: www-tag@w3.org Subject: Re: Five mechanical approaches to make an XSD profile without getting bogged by individual issues First of all, I would like to thank the TAG for taking the time to consider this issue. I will not pursue this any further here now. I am in no way satisfied with the result, which I am sure was reached in good faith; I am sure that all the TAG members recognize that its large overlap with XSD WG members effectively preludes it from reaching a consensus much different from that of the XSD WG. I expect to be back with this issue in five years time again, and I regrettably expect the same result as 2000, 2004 and now, since there is such a strong determination to marginalize small and non-corporate FOSS developers. noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com wrote: > Rick, you imply that the Note produced by the databindings WG calls for > subsetting of XSD. Consistent with the summary of their mandate that I > gave in an earlier email, it does not. Here is how things look from my perspective. It is certainly one-sided, but that does not make it unfair or wrong. However, since I have actually implemented XSD with a small team, I believe that my point-of-view is representative of others in my position, not just an individual rant. The XSD WG had no effective procedures for layering, profiling or simplifying XSD. This disenfranchised a certain constituency, has made life difficult for another who are forced to use it, and is biased toward corporate developers. This preference for giantism has meant that potential members of the WG with different needs leave the WG. This in turn means that the WG not only has no effective procedures, but it now has a strong disinclination against layering, profiling or simplifying XSD. When good-faith efforts at the WG forced this issue on to the agenda 5 years ago, the WG ultimately refused to deal with the issues itself and sloughed the issue out to a Working Group specifically chartered in a way that to marginalize the problem; disallowing the Databinding WG from making anything that might be called a layering, a profile, a simplification or anything that might feed back to the XSD WG. When this issue has been raised we have seen the following responses: i) These problems are well-known and old hat so go away ii) These problems are not real because XSD is really popular iii) People who have these problems can go somewhere else, because the XSD WG will not look at them iv) People who have these problems have already been looked after because the WG had a workshop which resulted in a WG being set up v) Don't expect the Databinding WG to find any solutions, it can only describe the problem. vi) The XSD WG does not need to look at the solution because it is the Databinding WG's province, vii) There is no expectation that the WG's description of the problem will find its way back to the XSD WG viii) There is no way to solve this problem because people have different requirements; the only acceptable subset or profile would have to be one that meets all the requirements of the current users ix) There is only one group that has this problem (databinding) and it has specific requirements x) The XSD WG cannot look into this problem because it is against its charter (which, if so, is a maddeningly fatuous argument, as if the charter and program of work of the Schema WG is handed down from on high rather than reflecting the recommendations and preferences of the WG members.) xi) If XSD cannot be so bad, otherwise RELAX NG would be more popular The fact that these all contradict or make no sense does not seem to matter. For the record, I would like to note that the discussion was sidetracked by the following red herrings: first, the claim that I was asking for XSD 1.1 to be thrown away rather than put on hold, second by the idea that problems with XSD could be resolved by finding out how many RELAX NG schemas were on the WWW, and third by the claim that I am saying that XSD is somehow completely unworkable for any use. Cheers Rick Jelliffe
Received on Tuesday, 2 June 2009 13:58:09 UTC