RE: SUO Scope and Purpose: Call for discussions
Jim,
Many thanks for sharing with the entire list your offline clarifications.
I appreciate your desire to get this effort off on the right foot, and
also your personal commitment to the project, which is of several years
standing.
Since you are the founder and organizer of the group, and have also taken
up the duty of concluding the (up to) 6-month scope and purpose discussion
announced on May 11, and are at the same time a government official, it
would further clear the air if you would inform the list whether any
contracts or grants under your jurisdiction are funding participants in
this Study Group to participate in the Study Group or to devote staff time
to its efforts.
It will also be helpful to know in advance whether those persons and
organizations who participate as voting members will be asked at some
point to pay an annual membership fee (as was the case in the previous
ANSI/ISO Ad Hoc Ontology group) and if so, what this fee will be.
Finally, your original announcement mentioned that the ultimate results of
the work would be submitted to ANSI. Though this is not for you to
clarify, it could avoid future misunderstandings if someone who can speak
procedurally for the ANSI/ISO efforts (Dan Gilman?) would share with this
list whether the old Ad Hoc Ontology group is still formally in existence
and whether it or L8 more generally would be the body to review the
results of any successful SUO effort.
Lee
Josiah Lee Auspitz
lee@textwise.com
17 Chapel Street
Somerville, MA 02144
617-628-6228
fax -9441
Please send attachments pasted within text or in ASCII
Plain Text non-proprietary software.
On Thu, 13 Jul 2000, Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I wrote:
> 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
>
> Please send attachments pasted within text or in ASCII
> Plain Text non-proprietary software.
>
> 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
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==
> This message was posted through the Stanford campus mailing list
> server. If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the
> message body of "unsubscribe ontology-std" to majordomo@lists.stanford.edu
>