[alicebot-archcomm] The High Cost of Standards

[Dirk Scheuring]

To me, the most important thing is to get some conversation going, no
matter how many participants there are for now, and who they are.

Dirk

On 9/22/06, mehri <foreverlinux at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I certainly do.
>
> Of us 6 or 7, a few of us are interpreter writers.  If the rest who are using AIML and writing commercial interpreters do not participate there's nothing we can do about it.  Besides, right now I would just like to see a few finer points of the specification cleared up.
>
> If you want more to participate you could perhaps send invitations instead of requiring them to ask for an invintation?  Just a thought...
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Dr. Rich Wallace <drwallace at alicebot.org>
> To: Alicebot and AIML Architecture Committee Discussion <alicebot-archcomm at list.alicebot.org>
> Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 7:36:36 AM
> Subject: Re: [alicebot-archcomm] The High Cost of Standards
>
> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> alicebot-archcomm mailing list
> >> alicebot-archcomm at list.alicebot.org
> >> http://list.alicebot.org/mailman/listinfo/alicebot-archcomm
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > alicebot-archcomm mailing list
> > alicebot-archcomm at list.alicebot.org
> > http://list.alicebot.org/mailman/listinfo/alicebot-archcomm
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> alicebot-archcomm mailing list
> alicebot-archcomm at list.alicebot.org
> http://list.alicebot.org/mailman/listinfo/alicebot-archcomm
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> alicebot-archcomm mailing list
> alicebot-archcomm at list.alicebot.org
> http://list.alicebot.org/mailman/listinfo/alicebot-archcomm
>