Karen Coyle wrote:

>> It's a shame.  I can see the reasons why the committee took it the way
>> they did, but the whole exercise has ended up smelling of architecture
>> astronautics.  See this column if you're not familiar with the term,
>> it's a good read:
>>         http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html
> 
> Speaking as someone who was on the committee, I can tell you that there 
> was not a consensus on "going astronautic." Although some of us fought a 
> good (well, at least hard) fight, the astronauts won. And if you think 
> the text of the final standard is dense, you should have seen version 
> 0.1! Eric Hellman wrote a revised version that was 1) in English 2) made 
> sense, but that, too, was rejected.
> 
> If you want to see my reaction to being presented with the "Bison Fute'" 
> model [1] on the first day of the OpenURL committee meeting, download 
> this [2] PPT and play it as a slide show (it is self-animated). (It 
> helps you get the joke if you know that "Bison Fute'" means "wily 
> buffalo".)
> 
> kc
> [1] http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july01/vandesompel/07vandesompel.html
> [2] http://kcoyle.net/presentations/cpm3.ppt

LOL! :-)

I bet there are several reasons why OpenURL failed in some way but I 
think one reason is that SFX got sold to Ex Libris. Afterwards there was 
no interest of Ex Libris to get a simple clean standard and most 
libraries ended up in buying a black box with an OpenURL label on it - 
instead of developing they own systems based on a common standard. I bet 
you can track most bad library standards to commercial vendors. I don't 
trust any standard without open specification and a reusable Open Source 
reference implementation.

Cheers
Jakob

-- 
Jakob Voß <[log in to unmask]>, skype: nichtich
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de