Re: TAG Response to request to consider XML Schema 1.1

noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com wrote:
>> 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. 
>   

Let me jump in and say that I was not making any accusation of improper 
bias, nor suggesting that XSD WG members should have recused themselves 
from, in effect, judging themselves. That was not my intent, nor how I 
read those words. Nor how I thought the TAG operated. Expertise is 
proper bias, not improper bias.

I don't see that my proposition is controversial, though I will 
certainly concede "large" would better have been "important".

The TAG includes as members an editor of the Structures recommendation 
(HT), an editor of the Datatypes recommendation (AM), a former member 
(NW), a former staff contact (DC), and the TAG co-chair (NM) is also a 
current member. I don't understand why this is "at least two", except 
polemically. And, actually, it is a majority who have had ties to the 
XSD work, not a minority.

Since NH and HT are well-known in a decade of public comments and 
actions to oppose any attempts to make XSD officially more 
non-monolithic or layered (a reasonable position of reasonable men but 
an unfortunate and wrong one IMHO),  and since I would expect that they 
will be deferred to (as key members of the W3C XSD WG) by any other TAG 
members who may unfathomably be disinclined to have much passion about 
schema languages, it seems obvious that the TAG would be "effectively 
precluded from reaching a consensus much different."  That it in fact 
did so would seem poor evidence against the proposition, I would have 
thought.  

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

Received on Wednesday, 3 June 2009 07:23:52 UTC