James,
Thanks for the excellent response. I like you sailing analogy
much better - that is indeed the right assessment.
Let me state here that one half of ebXML is founded in EDI, and
that over the years X12 and EDIFACT have achieved a very
high degree of vendor neutral stance. This is primarily because
the USER organizations own and drive the process - and the
vendors then get to deliver what the businesses see as requirements.
If I thought for one moment that ebXML was ultimately headed anywhere
other than being in the same space, supported by the same
organizations, then I would not be supporting it as hard as I am.
Like the UDDI team we are all sacrificing our own company and
private time - because all this work is so pivotal at this point in
space and time.
I am deeply heartened by your offer to meet and resolve the
issues between us. I will coordinate this with Klaus-Dieter Naujok as
I believe Klaus is the appropriate person here, and he is also based
close by in San Francisco; and we'll make sure the right people for
the ebXML side are also there.
Many thanks, DW. 301-482-2597.
==============================================================
Message text written by James Utzschneider
Hello David --
Thank you for writing, I appreciate your letter. Being a sailor, I do not
think your analogy is appropriate. Although I haven't really followed ebXML
for the last 8 months, I view your effort as more of a "chart" than a ship.
Customer applications are the ships, vendors provide the material, and
standards bodies prevent pilots from foundering on the rocks.
I certainly do not feel like going back to my team -- and the UDDI teams at
IBM and Ariba -- and tell them they have sacrificed their weekends and
dinners with their families for the last 4 months in order to build a
rudder!
But I must confess that I have not paid much attention to ebXML this year.
Participants in ebXML told me that your effort was founded in part as a
counter to Microsoft's BizTalk initiative. Because of that, we haven't
been
interested in joining. We have experience working with "standards bodies"
that operate under an anti-Microsoft bias, and every time we work with
them,
we get burned. More importantly, our customers get burned. Look at what
happened to CORBA, which transitioned from being a standards body Microsoft
helped create to being a standards body that worked against us. Customers
became confused, and object interoperability never happened.
I do not want to see this occur in commerce. That is why we designed into
the UDDI project a 12 to 18 month window to determine how we transition our
work to a standards body. And because UDDI is a jointly-run project, it is
certainly not my or Microsoft's decision to make any unilateral
announcements about a potential merger with a standards effort.
Nevertheless, I am willing to talk. It is clear that you guys are doing
some good work. Perhaps our views of the intentions of ebXML are wrong,
perhaps your effort has changed. Let's set up a meeting in the next few
weeks, I will make sure the right people from Microsoft are there this
time.
Regards,
James<
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