Re: [ontolog-forum] Data, Silos, Interoperability, and Agility

[John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul, Kingsley, and David,    (01)

PT
>> General principle: Standardization spells reduced revenue stream for
>> big software vendors. They will resist it as long as their customers
>> keep buying non-standards-compliant products.    (02)

KI
> Really well stated!!!    (03)

Yes.  In every industry, companies try to differentiate their products
by adding "secret sauce" to their "snake oil".    (04)

The only customers that can analyze the issues and have the purchasing
power to enforce standards are big corporations and big governments.
But the biggest corporations often ignore even the biggest governments.    (05)

KI
> The proprietary technology dance repeats itself over and over again.    (06)

Of course it does.  It's essential for innovation.  Patents were put
into the US Constitution to *encourage* companies to create proprietary
designs and give them a short-term monopoly of the results.  But the
mechanisms for deciding what should be patented are seriously flawed.    (07)

The idea of "proactive standards" -- of which the W3C is a leading
generator -- is to do an end run around the usual de facto stuff.
Unfortunately, the W3C's policy of rapid approvals puts too much junk
into their standards before the issues have been tested in practice.    (08)

JFS
>> General principle:  We need better methods for sharing what should be
>> shared and restricting what should be restricted.    (09)

PT
> Better than what?    (010)

Better than anything currently available.    (011)

PT
> XACML [1] defines a conceptual framework and concrete syntax for
> restricting or allowing access to any resource whatsoever based on
> attributes of the resource, the requestor, the action, and the current
> environment.  What more is wanted?    (012)

For starters,    (013)

  1. Transaction controls along the lines that have been analyzed,
     published, and implemented in DB systems for over 40 years.    (014)

  2. Mechanisms that enforce the restrictions so securely that
     companies like Symantec and McAfee go out of business.    (015)

Another general principle:  Giving people a notation for stating
a restriction without a mechanism for enforcing it is worse than
useless.  It creates a false sense of security.    (016)

DE
> Legacy systems do not contain public information.  They contain
> corporate  proprietary information.  The systems themselves are
> proprietary & the data in the systems is proprietary.    (017)

Yes.  I would add personal data.  A lot of my personal data is stored
by corporations whose security systems I depend on.  At least, I'm
thankful that they use RDBs, not SW formats.    (018)

John    (019)

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