Re: [school-discuss] Project Proposal

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

Michael Williams wrote:
> 
> There is an industry initiative for data interchange
> called The Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF).
> It's aims are to develop an educational standard open
> specification for data exchange based on XML.
> 
We looked at SIF a couple of years ago, and were interested in helping
to develop it, but it was very clear that it was heavily controlled by
those major software vendors (Microsoft, primarily).  There was no way
for us to help on it.

> It already has the backing of several major software
> vendors and compliance testing is underway. It allows
> "agents", individual applications, to exchange data
> with other agents through a "ZIS", Zone Information
> Server". 
> 
> If we could pull together the resources to "build" an
> open source version of the ZIS it would enable us to
> showcase the advantages of open source solutions. It
> should also provide some press coverage in publications
> targeted at school personnel.
> 
This sounds like a good idea.  I _think_ Bruno Vernier(are you on this
list yet, Bruno?) was considering whether his EduML work could be used
to help with something like this.  I know we at SEUL would be willing to
contribute hosting services to such a project.  Who's interested in
helping Michael on this?

> I know that there are other projects trying to develop
> similar specifications but do not have the backing of
> the industry. I'm not suggesting abandoning those
> efforts but see this as an opportunity to have an open
> source project mentioned in the same breath and on the
> same playing field as these industry giants.
> 
Michael, could you contact those other projects and see if they'd be
interested in collaborating on this?  If nothing else, they'd probably
be intereted in thinking about a "translation" mechanism between the SIF
stuff ahd what they're working on.

-- 
Doug Loss          As long as I have you there is just
drloss@suscom.net  one other thing I'll always need--
(570) 326-3987     tremendous self control.
                          Ashleigh Brilliant