[SCL] Re: Common Logic status with respect to standards

[pat hayes]

Harry, perhaps I should present my own position clearly, as we seem 
to be laboring under various misapprehensions.

First, I personally am not centrally concerned with achieving ISO 
standardization status, and am not willing to undertake the effort of 
achieving that status, or to work within a framework in which 
technical decisions are made by international compromise.  Emphasise 
'personal' and 'central'.

I know that other members of the group are primarily concerned to 
achieve CL standardization within ISO: John and Michael G. have 
always thought of this as their primary aim in this effort; but it is 
not mine.  So for SCL to be presented as the inheritor of the CL NW 
item within the ISO process is perhaps therefore slightly 
disingenuous, in that while it may well be the case that as far as 
John and Michael are concerned, to use the SCL as a kind of son-of-CL 
in this way is the best route to making progress in towards their ISO 
goals; that particular project is their agenda, not mine: and I have 
had my fill of working within the kind of 
being-reviewed-by-the-entire-planet mode that this kind of status 
seems to require. So, let us be clear: while I feel myself 
responsible for the prompt - as prompt as possible - completion of 
the SCL proposal, and the writing of a document; and while I am quite 
happy to allow this document, and the work it will report, to be put 
through the ISO process by someone (you?) I am not prepared to 
undergo the actual work of putting it through that process; in 
particular, I am simply not interested in explaining to an 
uncomprehending audience the reasons why SCL is different from Z. If 
this is not obvious to anyone, then the effort of explaining it to 
them is more effort than I am prepared to undertake. In fact, I am 
simply not interested in Z, period. If someone else (John? Michael?) 
wants to take up that ball and run with it, then by all means ask 
them to do so, but please do not expect that this group will do that. 
I am far more concerned to produce something that will be of value to 
the W3C semantic web effort than to achieving ISO compliance.

If you were told by anyone that this group was simply CL under new 
leadership, I am afraid that whoever told you that was 
misrepresenting the facts, which can be checked by looking at the 
early portions of the SCL email archive. I have been at pains, from 
the beginning of this entire effort, to emphasize that the SCL 
project is not intended to inherit either the goals or the 
methodology of the CL project.  See 
http://philebus.tamu.edu/pipermail/scl/2002-December/000006.html .
Perhaps it was a mistake to have re-used the "CL" part of the old 
term: I did so more out of scholarly acknowledgement than in any way 
to usurp the goals of the older project.

I am quite willing to cooperate with anyone who wishes to put this 
thing through the ISO process. I confess that I am not entirely clear 
what the purpose of this would be, or even what having an ISO 
standard logic would serve (whereas, in contrast, I know exactly what 
utility such a standard would have for the semantic web) , but I 
respect the fact that others feel strongly about the matter, and am 
willing to undertake, as far as it is in my powers to do so, to 
facilitate the ISO standardization effort, perhaps for example by 
serving as some kind of technical advisory position.  But I have to 
say that I am not myself willing to make technical compromises to 
achieve international consensus, to undertake irrelevant expository 
tasks because of ISO political exigencies, or to be hustled or rushed 
by the observation that the ISO CL work item is now horribly delayed. 
I accept no responsibility for this delay, howsoever true it might 
be, and it was precisely to avoid the sense of working with the world 
breathing down my neck that I formed the SCL group in the way that it 
was formed on 12/16/02, i.e. as a self-selected ad-hoc group of 
colleagues with a limited but achievable goal, rather than as an 
eternal committee answerable to an international organization.  So 
let us indeed try for the Dec 17 deadline: but if we miss it, tough. 
It is more important to get the logic right.

Pat
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