finding concensus (was: [Biocorba-l] BSANE and bioCORBA)

[Dickson, Mike]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Juha Muilu [mailto:muilu@ebi.ac.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2001 9:00 AM
> To: Martin Senger
> Cc: Ewan Birney; biocorba-l@biocorba.org
> Subject: Re: finding concensus (was: [Biocorba-l] BSANE and bioCORBA)
> 
> 
> Martin Senger wrote:
> > 
> > [ ...another extracted topic from the previous message... ]
> > 
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't want to force BioCorba development into the 
> OMG development model
> > > > > of voting etc because I think it sucks, but I am more 
> than happy to bend
> > > > > BioCorba to play well with BSANE in the Sequence area.
> > > >
> > > > What is the alternative? I do not see voting as bad idea.
> > >
> > > The alternative is classic open source "rough consensus" 
> - works for IETF,
> > > Apache, BSD etc etc etc.
> > >
> > 
> >    Juha and me are not pushing the OMG voting model. It works fine,
> > probably much better than Ewan thinks, but it's not the 
> point. Here we
> > will use "rough consensus" and we will hope that it will 
> work (it might
> > actually :-)). Then, with results achieved here, Juha will 
> go to the LSR
> > and present it there. It may not be hard because the only partner in
> > the submission of BSANE is NetGenics,Inc. and these guys 
> are also on this
> > list, so they will hopefully participate in the "rough 
> consensus" process.
> > 
> 

We essentially already are.  We've made use of both BioPerl and BioJava
internally and have contributed back to these projects.  One of the reasons
I see value in modeling BSANE after these public "rough consensus" efforts
is we build critical mass around a shared model that we can all agree too.
OMG doesn't work when trying to standardize bleeding edge but they do
provide a process and a mechanism to standardize best practice which is what
I think they're (and we are) trying to do.  So in short, I like both rough
consensus and voting and I'm glad to participate both in the quick evolution
of consensus standards as well as an adoption process that works off of
adopted best practices.

> Just to add:
> OMG is working openly and has managed to produce lot of good (and some
> bad) specs as well. I do not think that these two approaches are
> exclusive. OMG just provides a rather good infrastructure 
> under which we
> can work! Actually I hope that more institution will join to the
> OMG/LSR. We can make it work even better!!

I wholeheartedly agree.  I've had great fun with the interactions at the
OMG.  When we share a common goal and keep lines of communication we get
good work done, and we manage to leverage alot of excellent work done in
other domains.

Mike

> 
> >    Martin
> > 
> > --
> > Martin Senger
> > 
> > EMBL Outstation - Hinxton                Senger@EBI.ac.uk
> > European Bioinformatics Institute        Phone: (+44) 1223 494636
> > Wellcome Trust Genome Campus             (Switchboard:     494444)
> > Hinxton                                  Fax  : (+44) 1223 494468
> > Cambridge CB10 1SD
> > United Kingdom                           
> http://industry.ebi.ac.uk/~senger
> > 
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> -- 
>  
> +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
>  |Juha Muilu, Ph.D., EMBL Outstation| Email:  muilu@ebi.ac.uk 
>         |
>  |European Bioinformatics Institute | Phone:  +44 (0)1223 494 
> 624     |
>  |Wellcome Trust Genome Campus      | Fax:    +44 (0)1223 494 
> 468     |
>  |Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK   | 
> http://industry.ebi.ac.uk/~muilu|
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