RE: SUO Scope and Purpose: Call for discussions
Joe,
Thank you for letting me know that these issues need to be cleared
up.
Regarding funding, there was a meeting at Stanford University last
November in which the potential for funding was presented by Dr. Rick Morris
of the U.S. Army. Dr. Morris tried for 6 months, but was not able to
provide any funding to anyone. This is the reason I initiated this IEEE
Study Group to attempt to pursue the same goals with volunteers.
Each of us participating in this project have some sort of resources
(donating our person time, employer support, customer funding, etc.). It's
fine if participants want to voluntarily disclose their sources, but it
should never be expected and isn't really relevant. This is an open
process, so no one person or small group can outvote a community of this
size.
With the current Scope and Purpose, we've going to go with the
majority vote. If there's a major split, each side will have the freedom to
start their own standards project. So, if anyone feels anyone else is
steering this in the wrong direction, simply vote NO on the Scope and
Purpose and state how you would change it. All comments will be resolved
via this list. No one person will control the outcome.
After we decide what standard(s) we plan to develop, our next step
will be to review the various options for forums. Alternatives include
IEEE, NCITS-L8, ISO, or a newly formed consortium. But I feel it's
important we finalize the Scope and Purpose, so that potential participants
can decide if they want to participate.
I hope this answers most of your concerns. Let me know if any
persist. I urge anyone else with concerns to bring them to the floor.
Jim Schoening
From: Josiah Lee Auspitz [mailto:lee@textwise.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 09:46
To: Frank Farance
Cc: standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org;
onto-std@KSL.Stanford.EDU; lee@sabre.org
Subject: Re: SUO Scope and Purpose: Call for discussions
Frank Farance's inspiriting response about "volunteerism" in standards
work answers a good question, but not the one I put.
I don't think the point of my question was whether IEEE had a contract or
budget or expected a deliverable, but rather whether any of those persons
or organizations shaping the scope and purpose discussion would care to
disclose whether they were funded (such as through a change order or some
other reallocation in an existing government contract or grant) to jump
start this process through IEEE during a pause in the earlier effort under
ANSI, and if so whether the terms of this funding tied them to some
specific aims. It would clear the air if Jim Schoening would clarify this
point online.
I should make clear that I have no objection to such funding; indeed, I
see it as a precondition to forward movement and worry only about whether
the usual conditions for deliverables that regularly accompany funding
will block progress on important avenues. Because of the complexity of
the problems, the limits of "volunteer" effort were reached after the
first two meetings of the old ad hoc ontology committee in 1996-7, and a
few studies were specifically commissioned to address problems that arose.
The IEEE procedures are not in question and not significantly different in
any case from those of the merged Metadeta committee of ANSI, the formal
and competent successor group to the ad hoc committee where this work
began four years ago-- and the place where it can aspire to end up to the
extent it is successful. Frank Farance participates in this metadata work
and so can be of no illusion about the relative propriety and competence
of IEEE and ANSI/ISO in the ontologies area. The Open Forum work
associated with the Metadata group (sessions on ontology were included in
the last Open Forum in January) and the participation of a number of
government standards people and institutions, both in the US and abroad,
gives it a breadth that cannot be expected from a trade group however open
its procedures. The institutional question is not whether but when and
how this work will migrate back to its natural home. Nevertheless, a
truncated process through a more flexible structure can have its uses if
some members are funded to carry it through expeditiously and without
prejudice to a broader effort.
My underlying substantive concern is the one I expressed earlier to no
avail: that it is a "step backward" from the previous ANSI effort, and
prejudicial to it, to mistake some congeries of semantic and syntactic
design choices for an upper level ontology standard. "Genuine" standards
work in this area cannot be separated from an ongoing series of largely
procedural documents about what an ontology should contain, what
annotations and specifications are needed, and what gradations and
relations characterize ontologies constructed on disparate principles. As
a practical matter it means something like GAAP in accountancy (generally
accepted accounting procedures, which issue periodically). The files of
the previous effort will reveal some preliminary material germane to
developing "generally accepted ontological principles" (GAOP?), as will
the still unpublished results of the non-profit effort sponsored by the
Tschira Foundation.
The implemented example now being contemplated can be produced in months
rather than years as a contract deliverable with fulltime help and command
decisions about design choices, such as the one already built in about
syntactics.
It is, to continue with the example of syntactics, quite another matter to
produce a conspectus of the syntactic choices available and an analysis of
the practical consequences of each. If one has such a pluralistic survey
in mind, one will see the limits of assuming that the set of technical
devices now contemplated will suffice to unite the artifacts listed as
target ontologies to produce a useful utility for the translation,
alignment, interoperation, formalization, or transitive heritability that
moves us from some upper level to the interstices of the disparate
knowledge bases.
Lee
Josiah Lee Auspitz
lee@textwise.com
lee@sabre.org
17 Chapel Street
Somerville, MA 02144
617-628-6228
fax -9441
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On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Frank Farance wrote:
>
> At 02:10 2000-07-10 -0400, Josiah Lee Auspitz wrote:
> >
> >
> > In the interests of transparency and efficiency, could someone answer
the
> > following questions:
> >
> > Is there some outside contract specifying a deliverable that disciplines
> > this discussion? If so, what organization and person(s) are charged
with
> > this deliverable and under what time discipline, what budgetary
> > discipline? What items in the purposes and working groups are covered
> > by a budget and deadline, if any?
>
> There is a very simple answer:
>
> - The working groups (WGs) are all based on volunteer efforts.
> Typically, there isn't a problem getting volunteers. Someone told me this
> list has over 100 people on it ... there should be no shortage of people.
>
> - The time schedule is 4 years (but can be extended up to 2 years)
> once the PARs are approved.
>
> - The WGs choose their own methodology for achieving their work
> goals. Example: If the standard, say, has 6 chapters, the WG can finish
one
> chapter at a time (chapter 1 through chapter 6), the WG can finish each of
> each chapter and later on finish the document, or and other method ... as
> long as the document is completed within the timeframe. (FYI, there are
> best practices for making progress.)
>
> - The "standard(s)" (the technical document that we commit to
> delivering via the PAR) must be delivered by the deadline. Since there is
> no budget, budgetary issues don't apply.
>
> > The answers would enable the rest of us to be of greater assistance to
> > those charged with a specific task. It would also help us to sort out
> > genuine standards work in a minefield like upper level ontologies from a
> > contracted deliverable that can, if completed expeditiously, move us in
a
> > positive direction for a standard.
>
> This is "genuine" standards work. Why? IEEE is an accredited standards
> development organization (SDO), which means openness, due process, and
> fairness are *absolutely required* (IEEE has additionall requirements,
which
> include "balance" among vendors, consumers, and others ... probably not a
> problem for us). There is no "contracted deliverable" from an IEEE
> perspective ... IEEE provides the accredited forum (which we must maintain
> openness, due process, and fairness), it is up to us to complete the
> technical work.
>
> I hope I've answered your questions ... I'm not sure what you mean by
> "contracted deliverable" in this context.
>
> -FF
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Frank Farance, Farance Inc. T: +1 212 486 4700 F: +1 212 759 1605
> mailto:frank@farance.com http://farance.com
> Standards, products, services for the Global Information Infrastructure
>
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