One highly critical reaction on my thesis¶

Background: for the first four years of my PhD, I worked part-time at STABU. The technical director at that time (he's now enjoying his well-earned pension) was Kees Woestenenk.

A few days ago, Kees send me some comments on my thesis ...because this thesis has so many inaccuracies that it might hinder other developments that are in progress. ... information that is available for academics and researchers should be reliable, which is not the case if they rely on the information in this thesis. Kees hopes that his comments can reduce the damage I'm doing with my thesis.

A thesis being discussed is way better than a thesis that is slowly gathering dust on some shelves. The academic world thrives on discussion and on the sharpening of ideas against eachother, so I was glad that Kees put his opinion on paper and circulated it to some members of my committee. He also agreed for it to be placed on the web, so that the IFD library webpage now has a link to my thesis and Kees' comments. Free publicity :-)

My summary: Kees' comment is that my research of existing developments (and specifically the STABU LexiCon) has many inaccuracies and plain errors. My conclusions about those developments are way too critical and don't take into account the amount of work that has been invested in those developments and standards. The new possibilities of the internet don't offer anything new over existing well-proven technologies like ISO-STEP. And it would have been better if I'd have done my research entirely within the existing structures and limited myself to some small improvement suggestions here and there.