[uf-new] XFN - Professionals Network microformat

[Brian Suda]

On 4/27/07, Guy Fraser <gfraser at adaptavist.com> wrote:
> Frances Berriman wrote:
> >
> > What would you envision doing with supplier/client etc. type
> > relationships?
>
> In corporate environments, professional relationships need to be more
> descriptive so that managers can more easily locate suitable staff for
> projects. Eg. You could quickly build up a team that has worked with a
> particular customer/supplier/project before.

--- while i would agree that there are needs for finer grained
control, if no one is publishing this data, why would the existence of
a new microformat change this? we need to model real-world publishing
behavior.

> > 2. Issues with existing XFN rel's...
> >
> > We discussed this in IRC a while back (I don't have time to dig
> > through the logs) but it was pretty much the consensus that muse IS
> > mis-categorised as romantic and should be (and is already used as) a
> > non-romantic relationship to describe anyone who is of inspiration
> > etc.  The current problem is only that the documentation hasn't been
> > updated to reflect this better (probably will be done when/if XFN gets
> > updated as a whole).
>
> As the discussions in IRC aren't logged anywhere (or even pasted in to
> the wiki as far as I can tell) there is no record of that information.
> Anyone working with XFN would generally be unaware of the future
> direction. Again, it's all very closed.

--- they are logged, you can view and search them from here:
http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/

> Not knowing who even owns the copyright is another show stopper because
> there's no way any legal department would allow that through.
>
> The legal issues with microformats will prevent them from being used in
> a large number of corporate environments.

--- i think that large corporations like Yahoo!, BBC and others that
are ALREADY using microformats have had their legal teams consider
this. It wasn't a show stopper for them - i would hope that i wouldn't
be for others either. You can certainly use them as an example when
explaining that OTHER large companies have already evaluated their
usefulness and weighed in on the options.

> > To get corporates to try something, they need to see that others are
>
> That's not going to happen with seriously dodgey licensing and patenting
> stuff on must uF's.

--- again, several large companies including microsoft have expressed
interest in microformats.

> It's not about whether they are behind the times or not - the really big
> problem in the ambiguous copyright and patent statements, compounded by
> the prevention of making derivative works, etc.

--- is this a REAL problem, or do people keep bring this up as a
THEORETICAL issue? has anyone specifically been denied the use of
microformats from their company due to our liberal copyright? or are
people trying to make excuses or something else?

-brian

-- 
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk