After the announcement that GCA/IDEAlliance will stop to support XTM (XML Topic Maps), the project is looking for a new hosting organization and the names of OASIS, TEI-c and KnoW have been the first to be mentioned.

Announced by Paul Conn, GCA Vice President and IDEAlliance Chief Technology Officer, the decision appears to be motivated by the independent "business model" of the XTM project, which made it difficult for IDEAlliance to be involved in the project or to benefit from it:

Under the current model, IDEAlliance has none of these responsibilities [project management, administration, budget and marketing] and therefore neither provides nor receives much value, and we believe our resources can be better directed elsewhere

Even a least one observer, Patrick Durusau, has suggested that the decision might have been guided by personal matters:

I will refrain from commenting on the almost certain origin of this arbitrary decision by IDEAlliance and the childish petulance that urged it.

It seems likely that Steve Newcomb and Michel Biezunski, both influential GCA members and founders of the XTM project, were the main cement that bound the XTM project and GCA together -- and that after their departure from XTM the two pieces had no more reasons to stick together.

Other stories:

• New Topic Maps site from Biezunski and Newcomb
• Topic Maps Core arrives