Hi All,
(Rich, will you be at the ESSP meeting?)
Bryan, you mentioned that you have some optimism that you can find support for 1/2
FTE. I'm hoping that we can find some NOAA support for this effort, too. More on
that below. Here's a straw man. Please tear into it:
* The new FTE position would support the "document editor". The person's
responsibility is to write the text that will actually appear in the final
document and to moderate discussions. Like any editor there is a lot of real
authority in this and it needs to be a knowledgeable, interested person.
* We are working to make some NOAA funding available (can be spent outside of
NOAA of course) to develop the software for a web site to support CF standards
development. I propose the name "Standards Forge" for this software.
Functionally it would borrow a lot from Bugzilla -- able to open issues,
indicate severities of issues, track discussions, indicate linkages between
issues, resolve (close) issues, moderate membership in discussions. The user
interface could look completely different from Bugzilla. Versioning issues
need to be addressed, too (borrowing from CVS?). The construction of this
software could be "contracted out". (I can think of a few groups/individuals
that could do it well just off the top of my head.)
* Some organization would need to host the Standards Forge site. I'd like to
lobby Unidata to take on this role -- as CF is a spin-off of netCDF. (Of
course other institutions could install Standards Forge for their own purposes,
too.) Hosting the site does not necessarily imply leadership in the technical
discussions.
* Rich's ideas about "subcommittees" would be in this. The (distributed)
participants in the discussions could be grouped by large themes -- e.g.
curvilinear model grids, unstructured model grids, GIS compatibility, standard
name dictionary. The Standards Forge concept would support a hierarchy of
topics/subtopics/issues (in Bugzilla there is a similar hierarchy of
Products/Components/Bugs). The membership of the subcommittees would be
published on the site. Membership needs to be "open", but with some thought
given to rules for participation. The subcommittees would have the authority
to resolve technical issues by consensus. The document editor would be a
member of every subcommittee -- a start towards ensuring harmonization between
subcommittees.
* Versioning considerations need to include guidelines to ensure that all aspects
of the standard(s) are tested in real-world code implementations before they
become final. CF releases might remain "provisional" for a significant time
while this occurred. They would nonetheless be available for use. (I'd argue
that the current CF 1.0 should be regarded as "provisional" in this sense.
Much of it has never been tested in applications that read the data.)
- steve
==============================
Rich Signell wrote:
> Brian Eaton wrote:
> > 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 think part of the "problem" is that CF has become much more popular, and much
> more important in the atmospheric and oceanic communities! So there are more
> people clamoring to include increasingly complex functionality to the standard.
> Having a single person trying to sort through all the suggestions and
> responses and author new revisions is a daunting task, especially for a
> volunteer, as Brian said.
>
> What would the CF gang think about moving to a sort of "subcommittee" approach,
> where different small groups could be responsible for producing draft documents
> that address the areas that have had a lot of recent discussion, for example:
> GIS interfacing, handling of unstructured grids, handling of staggered grids.
> I think this could be done in the same informal way that CF has used in the
> past, but these sub-groups might result in more rapid progress, since the
> members would likely have a special interest in seeing these proposals become
> reality.
>
> One might imagine that these different areas might be useful to identify within
> the CF convention itself, as "modules". Thus a client that worked with CF2.0
> might say it supports the "core" module, but not the "gis" module or the
> "unstructured grid" module. This would help alleviate the concern that we don't
> want to make being "CF compliant" too complex.
>
> I think also that the discussion is complex enough that we could really use a
> discussion board that has different topics identified, is searchable, allows
> code revisioning, attachments, etc, but without too much overhead. Tom Gross
> has suggested Sourceforge, Steve Hankin Bugzilla - are their other candidates?
>
> -Rich
>
> --
> Richard P. Signell rsignell at usgs.gov
> U.S. Geological Survey Phone: (508) 457-2229
> 384 Woods Hole Road Fax: (508) 457-2310
> Woods Hole, MA 02543-1598
> _______________________________________________
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> CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
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--
Steve Hankin, NOAA/PMEL -- Steven.C.Hankin at noaa.gov
7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115-0070
ph. (206) 526-6080, FAX (206) 526-6744
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