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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