> We could say that, after one year from acceptance or when the next version > of the conventions document is published, whichever is later, a change > becomes permanent. What do you think?
Perhaps I am just a radical and out of touch with this community, but... This wording suggests a rather conservative view of software development cycles. What is the likely cost if the wording is "6 months from acceptance or upon agreement of the community, whichever is sooner" ? Yes, it's possible that in a corner case a change will be regretted -- but the same possibility exists a year, two years, or many years later. All that has to happen if a mistake is identified is it gets rediscussed and fixed in the next version. I've been recommending using CF 1.6 for published files, but it isn't permanent yet, so one can't really be sure one is following the provisional parts, as they might change. That's an unhelpful place to leave things, and should be minimized to the maximum extent reasonable. John On Mar 13, 2014, at 10:23, Jonathan Gregory <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Jeff > >> Present CF Conventions policies require that all changes be >> provisional, and marked as such in the document, until determined to >> be permanent at a later time (this determination has never been >> made). >> That's the meaning of all the pink and yellow highlighting in the >> document at cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov. > > Yes, this is a issue. As Richard said, it doesn't matter how it is marked. The > problem is that all changes, however old, are still marked as provisional, as > you said. This is (a) a bit silly and (b) a nuisance as regards legibility > of the doc. The aim of provisional status was to allow time for people to try > out the change, in case a logical flaw was discovered which hadn't been fore- > seen at the time of the proposal. This was because of the concern that many or > most proposals concern data which has not yet been written, so the metadata > being proposed can't have been thoroughly tested. It was supposed that some > tests, using specified software, would be used to demonstrate the new feature > was "working", but no-one had time to work out the details for this. > > I'd like to propose changing the rules. That's something the conventions > committee can agree, I believe. I would suggest the simplest possibility, if > we wish to retain provisional status, is to specify a time. We could say that, > after one year from acceptance or when the next version of the conventions > document is published, whichever is later, a change becomes permanent. What > do you think? > > Cheers > > Jonathan > _______________________________________________ --------------- John Graybeal Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org [email protected] _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
