charles.macdonald@hrdc-drhc.gc.ca
Tue, 25 Jan 2000 8:03:50 -0500
I may regret launching a few comments while I still have a bit of Flu....
1) RFCs are documents that have a defined update path, and are a mechanism to
preserve information that is connected with the net. IMHO, it might be worth
while to investigate putting both the current GPL and this new licence into
that "stream" as Informational documents. Then one could refer to "the GPL
2.0 see RFC xyza" with a fairly strong assurance that the document would be
found at a later date, even if the current RFC archives were to disappear, or
even if the mode of access where to change. I think the case can be made
that the GPL (and the BSD Licence) is itself a document that the 'net
requires to function and so it would be somewhat relevant for it to be
included somehow in the RFC structure.
2) I wonder if the proposed site at http://www.openstandards.org might not
be a bit of a duplication of effort? (not that that is bad) For example the
RFC documents are already kept at http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/ as well as at
http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html and at many other sites that are listed at
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc-retrieval.txt
Perhaps as an initial goal it might be worthwhile to consider a metasite with
pointers to the actual documents rather than the documents themselves.....
3) Not wanting to scare anyone off, but in the pre-open software world,
standards bodies developed a funding mechanism that is fundamentally contrary
to the way that free-software runs. The standards are written by committees
that are composed of folks from various stakeholders in the subject industry,
and when the new standard is published it sells for <MANY> dollars a copy.
(even for a 12 page document) with the funds raised going to support the
operation of the standards bodies. This may make it difficult to publish the
industry standards like the MP3 format.
As I say, I am still flu-ed up, and this is very much a personal opinion...
Charles MacDonald - Labour Information Management
< My own Opinion unless Otherwise Credited >
---------- Original Text ----------
From: "Wade Hampton" <whampton@staffnet.com>, on 24-Jan-2000 09:37:
To: INET["Aaron Turner"
<aturner@linuxkb.org>],INET[<arma@mit.edu>],INET["Richard Stallman"
<rms@gnu.org>],INET["ode-discuss@oswg.org" <ode-discuss@oswg.org>]
>From a previous mail, RMS's comments:
> As things now stand, the GNU GPL has no official status. Perhaps
> someday, if free software is far more accepted than it is now, the GPL
> or something like it will become an official standard. But this is an
> awfully big chicken, and I don't want to claim it will hatch out of
> the small eggs we are incubating today.
It has a VERY VISIBLE status, but not "official". Why not make it
official, or we can form something like an Open Standards Repository
(OSR?). We have registered a name and have a server (thanks SEUL):
http://www.openstandards.org (mission statement and info from this
thread to be added this week).
An OSR would have the following functions:
o The OSR would be a central location for referencing, reviewing,
and downloading standards for the Free/Open source community.
o Organizations and individuals could submit standards.
o Submittal would require doc name, synopsis, doc license,
author, home page reference, and a few other minor items TBD.
o OSR would assign an OSR doc number (like Internet RFC #).
o OSR would maintain a history of each registered standard.
o OSR would track updates to standards (version control, rollback).
(Aaron: I think storing multiple versions, but that it should strive
to maintain end products of documents rather than each minor change
over time. In the case of standards, people tend IMHO to only care
about the end product.)
(Wade: Only store the "released" versions. If someone refers to
GPL version 1.0 and another refers version 2.0, both should be
available. Presentation should be current first with a link to a
history and comment page, me thinks.)
o OSR could possibly maintain and track discussions on evolving
standards (mail archives, submitted comments, etc.).
o OSR would have a signature or MD5 sum for all docs in the
server so they may be validated.
o OSR would be designed to be a long-term project and hence might
eventually need to be sponsored by multiple organizations.
Overall, OSR could serve as a quasi-official function for open
standards (those that are not RFC's, STD's, or standards associated
with a vendor or such). Where would you currently go to register
the GPL as an Internet standard?
The OSR could additionally index other publicly available documents
such as the IETF RFC's to facilitate location of relevant information.
(Aaron's suggestion!)
The FIRST objective would be to establish the structure and a simple
WWW site (quite short effort). The SECOND objective would be to add
published documents that don't have a standard home (unlike the RFC's).
The THIRD objective would be to add other content (which has a home,
e.g., RFC's, vendor's docs, etc. which would be useful but are not
primary to the function of the OSR).
Possible types of standards might be:
o free and open source licenses (GPL, BSD, X, etc.)
o doc standards such as man, info, ODE, linuxdoc
o open protocols that are not published by the IETF RFCs (e.g.,
streaming MP3)
o file formats that are not published elsewhere
o open source RFCs
The following could be document groups:
LIC: licenses
STD: standards
RFC: RFC's
ICD: interface control documents (interface standards)
Implementation steps:
1. take the above and create a proposal for comments
2. create the OSR (invite others to join, setup WWW site,
mailing list?)
3. define the required info (name, groups, etc.)
4. define the submittal formats (ODE could help here)
5. collect existing standards (GPL, Linux File layout, etc.)
6. go live with OSR revision 1.0
7. updates, etc.
Some examples:
DOC Number Name, Version, Date
----------- -------------------------------------------------------
OSR-LIC-001 GNU GPL License, Version 1.0, date
OSR-LIC-002 GNU GPL License, Version 2.0, date
OSR-LIC-003 GNU LGPL License, Version 1.0, date
OSR-RFC-001 Open Standards Repository Concept, Version 1.0, date
OSR-RFC-002 OSR Submittal Requirements Draft, Version 1.0, date
OSR-STD-001 OSR Submittal Requirements, Version 1.0, date
OSR-ICD-001 Streaming MP3 via ???
Feedback is welcomed!
Cheers,
-- W. Wade, Hampton <whampton@staffnet.com> Support: Linux Knowledge Base Organization http://linuxkb.org/ Linux is stability, performance, flexibility, and overall very fun! The difference between `Unstable' and `Usable' is only two characters: NT
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