Dear All,
I've been the lead author of the CF conventions since December 1999 when
Karl Taylor encouraged Jonathan Gregory, Bob Drach, and me to consider
merging the GDT and NCAR-CSM metadata conventions which were independent
extensions of the COARDS conventions. Not too long after that we were able
to entrain Steve Hankin into the discussions. This effort has never
received any official support, and consequently moved forward slowly, but
surely until the release of CF-1.0 in October of 2003.
Since then I'm afraid things have proceded even more slowly and less
surely. As Bryan pointed out in the subgrid variation thread there is no
CF-2.0 draft document that contains the proposals that have been discussed
and generally agreed on in this mail list over the past year. Since the
release of CF-1.0 my job responsibilities have changed substantially and I
find that I no longer have the time to devote to moving CF forward. As any
benevolent dictator in my shoes would do, I will step aside as the lead
author as soon as someone else is ready to assume that role. Until that
time I will continue to maintain the CF home page, making sure the links
all work and so on.
I'd like to thank Bryan for his efforts to move CF forward. I feel
confident that things are moving in a good direction and look forward to
participating in future discussions.
Sincerely,
Brian
On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 09:05:18AM +0000, Bryan Lawrence wrote:
> Hi Folks
>
> Sorry about the long silence. Those who know me, will know I have strong
> opinions about a number of the things being discussed recently, so you'll
> also know that the fact I haven't been replying is due to other pressures.
> Anyway, I'm out from under for a while ...
>
> I'll comment on a number of other threads shortly, but firstly I wanted to
> expose some ideas some of us have about the future of CF.
>
> Firstly, I think we'll all agree that CF is evolving.
> Secondly, I suspect most of us are having trouble holding the various threads
> of activity in our heads, and the current status of those threads.
> Thirdly, the CF authors, who are our benevolent dictators (using a phrase
> beloved of the programme language community), have all at one time or another
> expressed that they can't cope (quickly enough) either ...
> Fourthly, anyone attempting to write code based on CF is faced with a standard
> that is getting harder and harder to interpret
> Fifthly (stop numbering everything Bryan), the standard name vocabulary is
> becoming unwieldy in and of itself to manage
> Sixthly (I failed to stop :-), CF is becoming so important it is having to
> interoperate with other communities (e.g. GIS, of which more in a later
> email) ...
>
> You get the picture. I could have written more.
>
> So what can we do about it?
>
> One of the things I think we need is a methodology which is more sophisticated
> than a mailing list to keep track of threads and discussions. Things need to
> be marked as live, or forgotten, or under action, or going into a future
> VERSION of CF. OK, one of my cards on the table: we need version control! We
> also need a mechanism of making a decision about what's happening, and we
> need more status information.
>
> <We> needs to be defined. In my mind <we> is the entire CF community. Well, we
> all know how efficient a committee is at building things, so a mailing list
> in and of itself doesn't make decisions... arguably CF is successful because
> we have a decision making process (the CF authors have final say). But for
> how long can they keep that up? If we want to change things, how could we
> change them? What happens when the CF authors interests start to diverge from
> the community of CF users?
>
> I would argue we need a community process, perhaps including an elected
> committee, perhaps including the right of veto from the CF authors (or some
> trusted group of folk). There are lots of options. This email isn't so much
> about what we do, as about suggesting a strategy to coming up with a process.
>
> (And, we need a standards track. We need CF to become more than a community
> standard, we would like WMO to take it on board etc ... if that happened,
> then we really do have an incentive for writing code which understands and
> exploits CF.)
>
> Anyway, back to the strategy. So what should that strategy be? Some of you
> will know of the Global-Organisation for Earth System Science Portals
> (GO-ESSP, see http://go-essp.gfdl.noaa.gov/). We have a meeting in June, in
> the UK, and on the agenda we will have a discussion of the future of CF. All
> the CF authors except Brian can and will make it. (Meeting details at:
> http://go-essp.gfdl.noaa.gov/news_meetings.html).
>
> On the table will be some real support for CF activities rather than
> best-effort activities. I expect (but wont be able to confirm til June) to
> have 50% of an FTE on CF support at the BADC from April 2006. It would be
> nice if we could find some other players who can commit some real effort to
> making this work. Having done that we obviously need a mechanism to make sure
> those of us managing and funding the effort are doing what the community
> wants, rather than what we want alone (if we did the latter, we'd be wasting
> the effort).
>
> Obviously not everyone who cares can come to that meeting, and many of those
> who care wont want to come because CF is only a small part of the agenda. So
> it will be important for us to canvas opinion via this email list before that
> meeting.
>
> So, this long email is by way of foreshadowing (and perhaps engendering) what
> I hope will be some vociferous discussion of how we take CF forward. I think
> we all agree that it is important, and I hope we can find some consensus on a
> mechanism for community maintenance of CF that maintains the existing rigor
> (spelt like an American to show how International I can be :-), but is easier
> for the community to use and evolve. (For evolve we must :-)
>
> Discuss :-)
>
> Bryan
>
> --
> Bryan Lawrence, Head NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre
> Web: badc.nerc.ac.uk Phone: +44 1235 445012
> CCLRC: Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, OX11 0QX
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Received on Thu Feb 24 2005 - 09:56:06 GMT
