Minutes of teleconference meeting on 2010-05-26

[robert_weir at us.ibm.com]

sc34wg6-bounces at vse.cz wrote on 06/01/2010 12:13:15 PM:

>
> 
> A question: if OASIS were to develop such an extension profile of ODF,
> defining the structure and semantics of some schema in an external
> namespace, with some specific normative behaviour defined for producers 
and
> consumers, would it be possible to refer to this from the ODF standard
> without a technical change to the base standard? I am assuming of course
> that there would be no requirement on implementers of the base standard
> (whether producers or consumers) to behave in any particular way with
> respect to extension elements, unless they chose to implement the 
extension
> profile as well.
> 


We have discussed profile standards in OASIS, but for different purposes.

1) Possibility of constraining (subsetting) ODF to create a "mobile 
profile" or "web profile", essentially a formally defined subset of the 
schema that is more appropriate for a given use.  Features would not be 
added, but would be subtracted.

2) Similarly constrained ODF that would prohibit certain classes of 
implementation-defined features, similar to what PDF/A does as a profile 
of PDF.  Again, this would be primarily subtractive.

3) Profiles to define the behavior of ODF when used with other existing 
standards.  So similar to W3C's profile of XHTML+SVG+MATHML, we could 
decide to formalize a profile of ODF plus one or more existing standards, 
say a hybrid ODF+PDF.

But to your question, I personally would not favor adding a new normative 
reference to the ODF Standard unless I was quite certain that that 
particular standard (or profile) was developed under conditions that 
ensured that it was at least as open, IPR-wise, as ODF is.  We owe that to 
our users.  That unfortunately would exclude reference to arbitrary ISO 
standards which in the general case are patent encumbered.  I'd need to 
take it case-by-case.  Or better yet, recommend that the specification is 
developed ab initio in the most open venue available, meaning OASIS. 
Moving material from OASIS to ISO is relatively simple.  Going the other 
direction is not, due to ISO specification paywalls and RAND terms and 
general lax treatment of patent disclosures in ISO.

-Rob