[Plugtest-org] Draft Invitation text

Dennis E. Hamilton dennis.hamilton at acm.org
Sat Sep 12 18:58:35 CEST 2009


Thank you Michiel.

I have added comment in-line with [[orcmid] ... ] bracketting. 

 - Dennis

Dennis E. Hamilton
------------------
NuovoDoc: Design for Document System Interoperability 
mailto:Dennis.Hamilton at acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430 
http://NuovoDoc.com http://ODMA.info/dev/ http://nfoWorks.org 


-----Original Message-----
From: plugtest-organisers-bounces at opendocsociety.org [mailto:plugtest-organisers-bounces at opendocsociety.org] On Behalf Of Michiel Leenaars
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2009 01:06
To: plugtest-organisers at opendocsociety.org
Subject: [Plugtest-org] Draft Invitation text

> We agreed to go forward with a "pre-invitation" letter on Monday, from
> OpenDoc Society, with a final, official invite in two weeks (Sept. 27th).
> 
> ===> Michiel will send a draft of pre-invitation letter to the list, and
> we should all review and raise any concerns ASAP.

All, please find the draft pre-invite below.

Best,
Michiel

---------------

Subject: Announcement ODF Vendor Interoperabilty Event

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have the pleasure to announce the second ODF plugfest, a two day ODF 
Interoperability Workshop which will take place in Orvieto on November 2nd and 
3rd 2009. This event is organised by OpenDoc Society and a number of other 
stakeholders including the OASIS ODF TC, ODF OIC TC and ODF Adoption TC. The 
workshop is the second in a series of events that brings together implementors 
of OASIS OpenDocument Format/ISO 26300. The first plugfest was held in The 
Hague in June this year under the aegis of the Netherlands government.

The Orvieto plugfest will again provide plenty of opportunity to 
unilaterally 
[[orcmid] I think unilaterally may not be the correct word. I suggest "mutually".]
test and discuss implementation issues of ODF with other application 
developers. The previous plugfest in The Hague was visited by over sixtyfive 
participants from forty different companies, open source projects and 
governments. 

As was the case in The Hague, we will be inviting a number of representatives 
of governments as well to attend as observers. Governments have an important 
stake in an open and competitive software market place, both from a governing 
point of view as well as from a user point of view. ODF is clearly a game 
changing file format. ODF support is nearly universal these days, as the common 
goal of a future-proof, vendor neutral format clearly benefits all. 

  [[orcmid] There is too much anti- posturing in this next paragraph.  I understand this is the felt belief, but there should be a better way to say it without imposing an agenda that may be awkward for government officials and agencies.  I would concentrate more on benefits, including the availability of a neutral, stable format that facilitates the development, management, and preservation of documents important to modern government and civil administration.  I would feature how assurance of interoperable, freely-available implementations of the OpenDocument Format enhances the ability of citizens and firms to observe and participate in eGovernment activities and confidently access and rely on eGovernment-provided resources, including electronic forms and other documents that citizens are able to use in dealing [better word than dealing needed] with civil administration.  You could say something about how ODF is seen as particularly suitable for these purposes; working to broaden implementation interoperability is important for realizing the promise of freely-chosen and substitutable implementations, thereby assuring ODF viability and support into the foreseeable future.]

[[orcmid] I thought it might be possible to tweak this paragraph a little, but I think it is better to replace it.  I think appealing to competition factors may be a red flag, so I would not want to raise that spectre either.  Again, this may be a felt belief but it could raise issues for the presence of government observers that would delay their participation.  It might also be difficult for commercial firms that are subject to differences in competition law across multiple jurisdictions to be seen operating under those terms.] 
Evidently, 
ODF creates a much more healthy ecosystem than was allowed by the historical 
file-format based application lock-in. Of course there is a bigger trend in 
which the move to ODF fits - the growth of a richer and more innovative multi-
vendor landscape, which in itself brings many new challenges besides the 
already complex convergence from a wide array of application-specific formats. 
We have to deal with the history of decades, predating in many cases our own 
employment. This is why precompetitive collaboration like we will see at the 
plugfest is so important for our future.

[[orcmid] Everything from here on seems fine.  However, if this is to be used in the invitation for government observers as well, I think it is inappropriate.  I apologize for missing the last call and I am not sure what the intention is.
*** NOTE: I made some corrections in the roster of the organizing committee.]


We will send you the preliminary program for the plugfest soon. The aim is to 
provide a low-level hands-on interoperability testing environment in which 
vendors and community members can fine tune the interoperability capabilities 
of their ODF implementations and make test scenario’s, recommendations and 
create best practises for implementors. The ultimate goal is to achieve full 
seamless interoperability for the entire feature set(s) of ODF across all 
suppliers, platforms and supported technologies.

The plugfest is meant for those people within your company or team that write 
and architect the code to handle the actual ODF. With many of the teams behind 
the competing ODF products on the market attending with their lead developers, 
technical management and community leaders, this will hopefully be another 
important milestone. We hope that you will send a delegation as well to 
participate.

Kind regards,
on behalf of OpenDoc Society

Bert Bakker
President 

------------
The organising committee for the second plugfest consists of:

Jeremy Allison (Google) 
Peter Amstein (Microsoft)
Zaheda Bhorat (Google)
Basil Cousins (Open Forum Europe)
Roberto Galoppini (OpenOffice.org)
Dennis Hamilton (individual)
Bart Hanssens (Fedict) - chair OASIS OIC TC
Don  Harbison (IBM) - chair OASIS ODF Adoption TC
Peter Junge (Red Office) 
Michiel Leenaars (Opendoc Society)
Doug Mahugh (Microsoft)
Marino Marcich (ODF alliance)
Fabrice Mous (OpenDoc Society)
Sachiko Muto (Open Forum Europe)
Andrew Rist (Oracle)
Luis Suarez-Potts (Sun Microsystems) 
Graham Taylor (Open Forum Europe)
Rob Weir (IBM) - co-chair OASIS ODF TC
Jan Wildeboer (Redhat) 
Oliver-Rainer Wittmann (Sun Microsystems)



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