[alicebot-archcomm] The High Cost of Standards

[Dr. Rich Wallace]

Do we think that the Arch Comm with 6 or 7 members is big enough or
representative enough to carry out the task of responsibly maintaining the
standard?

If not, how do we attract more members to the Arch Comm group?

It seems that many of the institutions and companies who are embracing and
extending AIML, are not aware or interested in the activities of this
committee, because they have never asked to participate.  (At least
Pandorabots has some representation on this committee).

> Sure, Rich - it costs something to maintain a standard. It also costs
> something to /not/ maintain a standard. It's reasonable for any agent
> to choose the option which is less expensive. But - which /is/ the
> less expensive option here, and for whom?
>
> You're obviously unsure about this. One piece of evidence for that is
> your recent email, dated sep. 13, 2006, where you wrote: "I think it
> is important to pay attention to the standard." I wrote back: "Why is
> it important?" You didn't reply.
>
> My question was in no way meant to be provocative: I honestly don't
> know why it would be important for me to follow an AIML standard,
> other than to not leave you to your own devices. I'm still unwilling
> to do that, since I still fell like I owe you something, for inventing
> this language. Every time I see a "Roll Call" message with no, or few,
> responses, I'm thinking: "Poor Rich - how could I help him get more
> attention?" Apart from that, I can see no reason not to ignore it. In
> the general case, I think that people who use "Chairman" as their sig,
> but weasel out every time somebody asks them a question that pertains
> to the organization they are supposed to be the chairman of, are
> beyond ridiculous.
>
> And I'm not alone. Many research institutions and  companies,
> including Pandorabots, have openly or covertly developed extensions to
> AIML, which they are happily using. And why not? For anybody who's not
> dependent on data interchange, standards have severe disadvantages:
> the need for a strong leadership, requirements for updating them, and
> increased overhead for tools and management.
>
> Even your alicebot.org is promoting the 'roll your own' strategy, as
> evidenced in the "Embrace & Extend" documentation for the <learn> and
> <eval> tags that only work for Pandorabots users [1]. So what's up? Do
> you need help which we could possibly give you, or are you just
> playing?
>
> Dirk
>
> [1] http://www.alicebot.org/Embrace.html
>
> On 9/21/06, Dr. Rich Wallace <drwallace at alicebot.org> wrote:
>> Although I can appreciate everyone's interest in developing the AIML
>> standard, it is worth pointing out that the AI Foundation is still small
>> compared with other standards organizations,and the AIML business is
>> small
>> compared with other programming languages.  This I think is the main
>> factor holding back the development of our standard.
>>
>> One standards process I am familiar with is Common Lisp. There have been
>> a
>> number of attempts to establish a standardization process for Common
>> Lisp
>> after it has been officially published as an ANSI standard, but none of
>> them have really taken off due to lack of funding.
>> The original ANSI standardization was very costly and very time
>> consuming.
>> According to
>> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/15248a1b11c5a603 it
>> took
>> nearly 10 years and at least $400K.
>>
>> During that 10 years, there were numerous large and small companies
>> (some
>> of which are no longer in business, or no longer in the Lisp business)
>> who
>> had a stake in the Common Lisp standard.   After that 10 year period,
>> the
>> Common Lisp standard has been pretty much frozen in place because no
>> companaies or governments have stepped forward to pay for the
>> organizational effort.
>>
>> It is true that Common Lisp is a much bigger language than AIML, but our
>> group is not really operating at the same level of funding as an ANSI or
>> a
>> W3C.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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