Re: workprocess - changes comments

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Jon wrote:
| [Terry Allen:]
| 
| | Which members get to vote?  The Bylaws don't separate the sheep from
| | the goats in this regard, and the OASIS page on benefits of membership
| | talks about voting for Directors and TRs only.
| 
| If you pick up sections 1-5 of article 12 and shake them hard enough,
| the following things fall out:
| 
| 1. Members are of two kinds: voting and non-voting.
| 
| 2. Anyone can be a member who pays the dues.
| 
| 3. The oasis board sets the dues.
| 
| Add them up and I think they give the board the authority to set dues
| based on membership levels.  They've done so in such a way that the
| voting memberships are expensive and therefore attractive only to
| organizations while the non-voting memberships are cheap and are
| available only to individuals.

This is off topic for workprocess, but can anyone point me to a
statement of the board's policy on dues and voting?

   http://www.oasis-open.org/html/members.htm

is incomplete and apparently erroneous; s.v. Contributors it says 
Contributors get a vote on TRs, but only that they "participate
in the selection of the OASIS Board of Directors".  Nothing is
said about voting by Sponsors.  Of Sponsors it is said,
"Sponsors benefit from visibility within the industry, receive the 
highest level of registry/repository services and are directly 
involved in the work of the OASIS Technical Committees."  But no
decision on level of regrep service has been made to my knowledge,
and everyone may participate in TCs.

S.v. Universal Benefits it says that everyone gets to vote on 
candidates for the Board.
 
| Notice that the proposed committee process gives individuals voting
| rights within committees.  The voting/non-voting distinction applies
| to elections of the board of directors and actions taken in full
| assembly as specified in Article 13 of the by-laws.

I understand the distinction, and as I say, voting outside of 
committees is off-topic here, but we sure need to get it nailed down.
I never paid attention to governance issues before, figuring that
everything was in order and our contact person saw information I
wasn't seeing, but I'm discovering I was wrong.

| P.S. My hands are staging an insurrection against working the shift
| key to get uppercase in OASIS, XML, Directors, By-laws, etc.  I don't
| know whether this is a temporary work stoppage or something more
| serious.

I hear you.  Your only hope is several weeks off without work.


regards, Terry