[Auth]Approaching Vendors

[Ron Burk]

It seems to me we're within a week or two of
needing to involve vendors of personal information
database software, as well as web site designers
(I know, we've probably all designed web sites,
but there are likely folks out there with both broader
experience, and greater ability to influence others.)
I say this, because it seems we're getting more into
a level of detail that could easily be invalidated by
the input of those participants. I'm thinking the
following needs to happen:

* Continue the feedback loop on the documents
   Albert and I are maintaining (I will link mine to
   his). Increase confidence that there's a
   rough consensus, and that no one will pop
   up and say "But none of this can actually
   work because:"

* Because most of the vendors do not integrate
   directly with the browser (as far as I can tell),
   I would like to have a better selling proposition for
   them than I currently have. Or maybe I should just
   not worry about it, get them involved, and let them
   spell out exactly what their needs are. I have this
   vague notion that a relatively simple "hook" DLL would
   handle all their Windows needs, or maybe they only
   avoided integrating with the browser previously precisely
   because there was no standard like this.

* Finally, there has to be some quasi-official endorsement
   from some quasi-official dotGNU person(s) that this
   is really going forward. Any effort could fail, but
   I think it's important to approach the third-party
   participants with something that's a real, endorsed
   portion of the dotGNU suite (as opposed to "umm,
   this is something we're thinking about and maybe you
   could take a look" :-).

* In conjunction with the previous item, we should put
  together a form letter to use in approaching vendors.
  Since dotGNU is not trying to enter the business of
  creating client software for this particular project, it's
  important to treat each vendor equally and avoid any
  appearance of favoring one over another. There may
  be legalistic issues to be ironed out in this area as well
  (e.g., specifying ownership of the standard that they
  will be helping form, avoiding anything that could be
  construed as a promise to the vendor, etc.).

IMO.
Ron Burk
HighTechInfo.com, www.hightechinfo.com