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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear Dieter,<br>
<br>
Thanks for the quick reaction, and especially for a possible
interpretation of your question that you surely didn't intend, but
that made me reflect on the possible strategies of the CSC towards
the "requesting agencies" in cases like the hopefully upcoming one
concerning ISO. Maybe we can come up with a sensible policy
together.<br>
<br>
In the first step, let me shove ISO aside, because the ballot I'm
asking for right now does not concern ISO (although the direct
motivation for my message came from what happened in a DIN telco).
It concerns the general policy of whether we want to have a
mechanism by which CLARIN regulates the use of "clarin.eu"-based
namespace strings.<br>
<br>
(first remark: if I said "allow" anywhere before, I think we
should replace that word with "regulate", because I don't think
that this is a matter of _permission_ unless "CLARIN" is a
registered trademark and there is a battery of lawyers ready to be
paid for fighting to enforce that trademark in obscure namespace
strings; "regulate" would work great especially in connection with
a policy that requires an informative web page to be associated
with the requested namespace URI)<br>
<br>
In the second step, I am now wondering if we should by policy
distinguish between (a) expert bodies such as ISO committees, and
especially a committee with which a formal liaison exists, hence
an implied measure of trust that precludes the CSC from playing a
role of a potential bottleneck in the ISO process, and (b) "other
bodies", where we might actually be entitled or maybe even
expected to play an expert role. I'm wondering if such a
distinction should be made formally, or rather come up in the
discussion of individual cases, as in:<br>
<br>
Case (a):<br>
reporter: "TC37SC4 has requested a new namespace, with the postfix
'maf/n1'"<br>
committee: "have they submitted text for the corresponding web
page? is it readable? if so, proceed"<br>
<br>
Case (b):<br>
reporter: "Project XY has requested a namespace for their XML
vocabulary, with the postfix 'xy/fluff/n1'"<br>
committee: "What is Project XY? What centre is it located in?
Let's have a look at their suggested info text, let's have a look
at the project, and then decide"<br>
<br>
It seems to me that leaving this kind of issues for discussion
might be a friendlier, and first of all, a more flexible strategy
than categorizing the "requesting agencies" into "expert bodies"
and "non-expert bodies", because I am sure we could stumble upon
cases where even an act of such pre-categorization could
unnecessarily cause bad blood.<br>
<br>
I would love to know the members' thoughts on that.<br>
<br>
---------------------<br>
I shoved ISO aside at first, and now I'm reaching into my hat
again to pull it back out and address the question on whether the
CSC can look at the specification that urgently needs a new
namespace. The answer is, to my mind, standard: ISO documents at
late stages in the ISO process can only be shared within the ISO
committee where they were produced or its national mirror
committees. When preparing the liaison between CLARIN-ERIC and ISO
TC37SC4, Andreas Witt tried to bargain for a modification of this
rule, but as far as I recall, there was no way to change this
within category-A liaison. Now that I'm looking at the relevant
section of ISO directives [1], I am wondering what the beautifully
vague statement that "<a
id="TPSXRefTextDestination-6-sec-sec_1.17.5.1-30331">Technical
committees and subcommittees shall seek the full and, if
possible, formal backing of the organizations having liaison
status for each document in which the latter is interested</a>"
can possibly entail. I don't think this is an escape hatch (or a
hidden lever), but maybe Andreas can shed more light on this, at
some point. For practical purposes, however, it would seem strange
to me if we were to in a way challenge ISO to give up its
principles for the sake of a namespace string in a standard
produced by one subcommittee. In my glass ball, I see ISO
shrugging this request away and allowing the standard to drop from
the publication process -- we wouldn't be hitting ISO but rather
SC4 experts, whose work would simply turn out to have been in
vain.<br>
<br>
The SC4 specification that is for sure affected by the namespace
issue is "SynAF Part 2" a.k.a "the standard formerly known as ISO
Tiger" [2], which would probably be in print right now if not for
this last-minute hiccup. Another proposed standard that may be at
some point subject to this predicament is... CMDI part 2 [3], and
Thorsten Trippel would surely be able to say if this particular
item would need a CLARIN-based namespace -- but even if it doesn't
require one, what's important is that some of the affected
specifications are or may be rather important to CLARIN itself, so
we certainly want to be accommodating and flexible here, rather
than risk creating a bottleneck.<br>
<br>
Apologies for this lengthy reply to a short question :-) But I
felt that there was a need to tease two things apart at first, and
that a space was opening for a policy discussion concerning the
potential regulatory role of the CSC in the namespace business.<br>
<br>
Best regards,<br>
<br>
Piotr<br>
<br>
[1]:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.iso.org/sites/directives/directives.html#Section-sec_1.17.5">http://www.iso.org/sites/directives/directives.html#Section-sec_1.17.5</a><br>
[2]: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.iso.org/standard/62491.html">https://www.iso.org/standard/62491.html</a><br>
[3]: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.iso.org/standard/64579.html">https://www.iso.org/standard/64579.html</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 20/10/17 18:11, Dieter Van Uytvanck wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:af6a54c3-5b4e-e4da-200b-2019bf4e8edd@clarin.eu">
<pre wrap="">On 20/10/2017 17:12, Piotr Banski wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">the need for potential clarin.eu-based namespace strings has become very
urgent and the ISO process will automatically delete the standards in
question (among them SynAF part 2, up till recently called "ISO Tiger"
but now rebranded not to use the "ISO" in the name)
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
Thank you for this proposal Piotr. Can you tell us where we can find a
copy of the standard specification or proposal? Would be nice to know in
detail to which standard we are assigning the clarin.eu namespace.
best,
</pre>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Piotr Bañski, Ph.D.
Senior Researcher,
Institut für Deutsche Sprache,
R5 6-13
68-161 Mannheim, Germany</pre>
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