[SCL] Getting a move on

[pat hayes]

Folks, I am sending this email to get your reaction to a proposal to 
try to move the Common Logic standard (http://cl.tamu.edu/) forwards 
a little faster, or possibly to create a new initiative on a faster 
track.

The time is extraordinarily ripe for a good logic standard to exist; 
CL is far and away the strongest candidate; but work on CL has been 
proceeding very slowly. In the meantime, valuable opportunities to 
lock down a useful standard, based on the very real advances that we 
have made, are rapidly passing by, and may soon be lost unless we act 
quickly.

The ISO CL standardization initiative is proceeding, and we can 
suppose that it will continue; but it is far too slow for the many 
other potential applications which are clamoring for a useful 
standard logic formalization, including the Semantic Web effort(s) 
and the NIMA NIMD effort. In order to influence these standardization 
efforts, we need to think in terms of activity that comes to clear, 
definite recommendations in a matter of months rather than years.

In this spirit, therefore, I propose to form an ad-hoc working group 
whose aim will be to produce a firm, detailed CL-style standard 
suitable for immediate application, with similar aims to the declared 
CL project, ie a general-purpose first-order logic language, with a 
clear semantic theory and a machine-oriented syntax; but also 
provided with an XML syntax and designed to be compatible with, and 
useable alongside, the existing and emerging Web ontology standards 
RDF/OIL/OWL. The idea is to take the existing state of the CL 
proposal as a starting-point, but be willing to compromise its 
theoretical elegance with practical issues arising from the need to 
be compatible with existing languages and standards, particularly 
XML.  And perhaps most importantly, with a target finishing date of4 
July 2003, six months from now.

This group will have no formal standing or authority, but I am sure 
that if it manages to do a reasonable job then the work will 
advertise itself and acquire an authority of its own. The potential 
utility certainly seems to outweigh the risk of obscurity, in any 
case. Doing this will require a greatly increased level of commitment 
compared with the CL effort, at the level of perhaps a day per week 
of everyone's time for half a year. As a minimal level of effort, 
members should normally expect to take part in a weekly 
teleconference lasting an hour, and can expect to spend on average 
perhaps another hour preparing for the teleconference and several 
hours undertaking tasks that arise from the teleconference. At times 
these levels of effort may rise substantially, but hopefully such 
periods will be relatively brief. Those of you who are on W3C WGs 
will know what I mean. I know this is a lot to ask, but I also know 
that with such a level of effort very large strides can be made in 
short time-scales, even when the parties involved in the effort do 
not all agree on every topic, and all have different agendas.

There is a fairly well-worked-out set of procedures for keeping such 
a working group on track and focused on its business, and I propose 
we use them. They include a mutual acceptance of rules of order in 
conversations, the chair having overall control over the discussion, 
and everyone agreeing to bind by group decisions (although such 
decisions can be re-opened for further discussion, such a re-opening 
is only allowed under exceptional circumstances, such as when an 
entirely new issue has arisen that had not previously been 
considered.) Under these circumstances, however, and since we have 
had some extremely contentious decisions in the past which were taken 
without adequate attention being paid to such processes, I will 
suggest that the WG begin by re-opening every CL decision that has 
already been taken, and then closes as many of them as possible quite 
rapidly - in a matter of weeks - recording its decision as it does 
so, largely as a matter of getting those decisions on record, and 
also helping members of the WG who have not been previously actively 
involved with the CL work to get up to speed.

The main purpose of this email is to ask each of you:

(1) if you are willing to take part in this activity, ideally as an 
active member but perhaps in a consultative capacity. (If anyone 
would like to volunteer to *chair* it, I would be delighted to 
entertain suggestions, but in the meantime I will act as organizer 
and chair.)

(2) if you can suggest anyone else who should be invited to take part 
(I perhaps should admit  that some of y'all I do not expect to be 
able or willing to volunteer, but I thought you might be able to 
suggest someone else who might)

(3) if you know of any sources of funds that might be available to 
support this effort, or any suggestions that might help facilitate it.

I have some limited access to a small level of funding from Florida 
state, but would breathe easier if there were some other sources of 
support available. Unless some source of funds is found, it may be 
impossible to have a face-to-face meeting, but I think we can manage 
to get the job done without that luxury.  Whatever the funding 
situation, however, I propose that we get started some time in 
January.

All active members must be willing to take on the various chores that 
are necessary, chief among them being updating various records of the 
issues being discussed, summarizing the various views, recording the 
decisions taken, and keeping drafts of documents up-to-date. 
Volunteers for the task of Scribe, who keeps notes during the telecon 
discussion and records action items, decisions, etc., will be 
particularly welcome.  An essential part of the activity is the 
continual drafting, critical reading and updating of documents, 
maintenance of test suites, etc., and members of the group must 
expect to sometimes be asked to write technical and expository pieces 
(ranging from a paragraph to a monograph) at relatively short notice 
and also be willing to have these submitted to group criticism and 
re-writing, since all publications produced by the WG are in the name 
of the entire WG.  Members must be willing to write in HTML which 
will conform to W3C standards (http://validator.w3.org/). Members, 
and certainly active members, must have high-bandwidth web and IRC 
access, preferably access to a website, and be able to cope with a 
high volume of email. It is also important that all internal email, 
transcripts of discussions, IRC logs and everything else be 
maintained in a publicly-accessible archive. (I would welcome any 
offers of help with setting up the machinery to maintain such an 
archive, by the way.)

Thanks for reading this far, and happy holidays.

Pat Hayes

PS. To contact me by phone after the end of this week, use either 
(650)494 3973 or (850)291 0667 (US Pacific time, GMT-8). I may be 
reading email only intermittently over the Xmas-Hogmanay holiday 
period, but feel free to phone me.
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