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Subject: Request for agenda item: Revisions to TC Policy
Hello Patrick,
On behalf of the Process Advisory Committee, I'd like to request
that an item titled "Revisions to TC Policy" be added to the
agenda of the phone meeting of the OASIS Board of Directors
scheduled for 2 August 2001.
In accordance with the agreement of 18 April 2001 between the PAC
and the TAC regarding the direction forward for OASIS technical
committees, the PAC has developed a list of proposed revisions to
the OASIS TC process. The PAC requests the Board to consider and
approve these changes, detailed in the document below, at its
meeting 2 August.
Best regards,
Jon Bosak
Chair, OASIS Process Advisory Committee
##################################################################
PAC Recommendations for Changes to the OASIS TC Policy
The OASIS Process Advisory Committee (PAC) was chartered by the
OASIS board in 1999 to develop a scalable process for OASIS TC
committees. It met frequently by phone and in person to create a
new process that was finalized in June 2000 and adopted by the
board as an amendment to the OASIS bylaws at board meetings in
July and August 2000. In March 2001, the board removed the
amendments from the bylaws, restated the TC process as the "OASIS
OPEN TECHNICAL COMMITTEE POLICY," and expressed its desire to
exercise more control over the process.
The PAC met 18 April 2001 with members of the board's Technical
Advisory Committee (TAC) to work out a plan that would accommodate
the desire of the board to create technical initiatives under its
direct control while preserving a process for member initiatives
that has received widespread attention and approval in the XML
developer community. As recorded in the minutes of that meeting:
The chair proposed, and it was agreed, to attack these issues
by dividing OASIS initiatives into two categories: "OASIS
Member Initiatives" that would explicitly be labeled as such to
distinguish them from initiatives of the board, and "OASIS
Portfolios" that would be created by the board in order to
foster and coordinate work following a particular technical
direction. Member initiatives would operate according to the
current TC procedures but would be carefully distinguished in
announcements from OASIS Portfolios and would be subject to
board veto during the 15 days provided by the process for
administrative review. OASIS Portfolios would each operate
under the terms of a "Program Plan" or "Portfolio Charter" that
would describe the technical framework under which each
official OASIS effort would operate, and they would be directed
by a coordinating body or technical advisory board that would
(for example) be composed of the chairs of each TC in the
portfolio.
The PAC passed the following resolution:
That the PAC, with input from the TAC, develop a new section of
the TC process that distinguishes formal, coordinated OASIS
initiatives ("Portfolios") from uncontrolled Member
Initiatives.
At its meeting 30 May 2001, the PAC discussed this further and
concluded that the interests of the board would best be served if
the PAC met another time or two to consider some changes (mainly
bug fixes) to the existing TC process, which would continue in
existence as the process for "uncontrolled member initiatives,"
and then, after seeing these changes through adoption by the board
and meeting with the board to explain the plan arrived at with the
TAC, to formally dissolve so that the board could appoint a new
committee to develop the new "OASIS portfolio" process described
above for governing technical initiatives of the board.
In furtherance of this plan, Karl Best formed a list of 20 issues
that had been raised regarding the TC process, and the PAC met on
13 June 2001 and 27 June 2001 to consider each of these issues.
In the case of seven of these issues, the PAC determined that
resolution would require changes to the TC Policy. This document
sets forth the recommended changes for action by the board.
Since the PAC was working from the language adopted by the board
last year in the context of the then-existing OASIS bylaws,
editorial changes have been made in the following to align the
directions given for amendment in the PAC resolutions of 13 and 17
June with the section numbering used in the TC Policy published by
the board in its minutes for 12 March. The rationale for each
recommendation has also been lightly edited to fit this format;
for full details, see the PAC minutes for 13 and 17 June.
Respectfully submitted,
Jon Bosak
Chair, OASIS Process Advisory Committee
##################################################################
Amendment 1: Require OASIS membership before proposing to join TC
The first paragraph of Section 1(d) of the current TC Policy
reads as follows:
The first meeting of a TC shall occur no less than 30 days
after the announcement of its formation in the case of a
telephone meeting and no less than 45 days after the
announcement of its formation in the case of a face-to-face
meeting. Persons intending to participate in the first
meeting must register to attend no later than 15 days prior
to the event by notifying the person named as chair of the
new TC of their intention to attend the meeting. Every
PEOTCP present at the first meeting of a TC shall be
initially a voting member of the TC.
Problem: "People are signing up for the TC when they are not
yet members; additional time is required for additional
tracking to make sure that they obtain OASIS membership before
the first meeting. The current language does not promote
scalability." (Karl Best)
PAC recommendation: That the first paragraph of Section 1(d) of
the TC Policy quoted above be amended to read as follows:
The first meeting of a TC shall occur no less than 30 days
after the announcement of its formation in the case of a
telephone meeting and no less than 45 days after the
announcement of its formation in the case of a face-to-face
meeting. Persons intending to participate in the first
meeting must register to attend no later than 15 days prior
to the event by notifying the person named as chair of the
new TC of their intention to attend the meeting and must be
eligible for TC participation at the time they register.
Every PEOTCP present at the first meeting of a TC shall be
initially a voting member of the TC.
==================================================================
Amendment 2: Bug in the two-out-of-three rule
Subsection 1(f)(i) of the TC Policy currently reads as follows:
A member shall be warned by mail from the chair of the TC
upon failure to attend two out of every three successive
meetings of the TC. Membership shall be terminated if the
member fails to attend the next meeting following
transmittal of the warning.
Problem: This language (adopted almost verbatim from ANSI
rules) allows a member willing to endure repeated warnings to
attend only half the meetings instead of two-thirds as
intended. For example:
miss meeting #1
miss meeting #2
get warning from chair
attend meeting #3
miss meeting #4
get warning from chair ...
Discussion: There are two problems here. One is mechanical:
warnings should not reset the counter. The other is more
subtle. As noted in the PAC minutes for 13 June:
Sometimes the problem is that a few very useful members are
also useful members of other committees and simply cannot
attend all of the meetings. In this case, a chair needs to
be able to support the continuing participation of such
members. But in some other cases, the problem is that a
person who wishes to be perceived as a member is not, in
fact, willing to contribute to the work. The TC process is
specifically designed to remove persons in the second
category from voting membership in the TC. The trick is how
to enable the completely automatic removal of a useless
member while permitting the chair (with the tacit consent of
the TC) to allow a useful member to break the rule
occasionally.
PAC recommendation: That Subsection 1(f)(i) of the TC Policy
quoted above be amended as follows:
1. Insert "their first" into the first sentence of 1(f)(i)
so that it reads:
A member shall be warned by mail from the chair of the TC
upon their first failure to attend two out of every three
successive meetings of the TC.
2. Add "or if the member consistently fails to attend two
out of every three meetings" to the second sentence of
the same paragraph so that it reads:
Membership shall be terminated if the member fails to
attend the next meeting following transmittal of the
warning or if the member consistently fails to attend
two out of every three meetings.
==================================================================
Amendment 3: Retention of TC membership upon change of employment
Problem: Since TC members are individual experts whose company
affiliation is irrelevant to their membership in the TC, most
cases in which TC members change employers can be handled very
straightforwardly if the member obtains an individual
membership ($250) before leaving an OASIS member employer. But
if the member has already accepted employment with another
OASIS organization, this will be a waste of money. And there
is the increasingly frequent case where a member's employment
ceases without notice. We need to patch over the crack here
with a grace period.
PAC recommendation: That Subsection 1(e) of the TC Policy be
amended by adding this new paragraph at the end of the
subsection:
Persons who lose PEOTCP status for reasons including, but
not limited to, change of employment, shall have a further
14 days of TC membership in which to request a leave of
absence or re-establish eligibility.
Editorial note: Since the TC Policy uniformly specifies 15 days
for periods of this duration, the PAC probably should have
specified 15 days here rather than 14. For the sake of
consistency, therefore, I recommend that the board adopt the
following instead:
Persons who lose PEOTCP status for reasons including, but
not limited to, change of employment, shall have a further
15 days of TC membership in which to request a leave of
absence or re-establish eligibility.
==================================================================
Amendment 4: Minimum number of members
Problem: There's nothing in Robert's to prevent a committee
from consisting of just one or two people (and indeed, such a
committee can be a very useful thing, allowing an issue, for
example, to be handled by a Motion to Commit and then
designating just one trusted person, as chair and only member
of the committee, to research something and come back with a
recommendation). But while this may be fine for subcommittees
of a TC, it's not good for a TC itself to have fewer members
than the three required to start it in the first place.
PAC recommendation: That Subsection 1(k) of the TC Policy
be amended by adding a third sentence, so that the
section in its entirety reads as follows:
(k). TC Meetings.
"TC meeting" shall be construed to include telephone
conferences and video conferences as well as face-to-face
meetings. Any TC that fails to conduct at least one meeting
during a calendar year shall cease to exist at the beginning
of the calendar year immediately following. [new sentence:]
Any TC whose voting membership falls below three members
shall cease to exist.
==================================================================
Amendment 5: Public subscription to discussion lists
Problem: The current TC Policy allows for the formation of
short-term "discussion lists" (maximum life 90 days) for the
purpose of discussing the formation of a TC. Such discussion
lists are visible to the general public. The question is
whether they should also be publicly subscribable. While the
advisability of extending what is essentially a member benefit
to nonmembers is debatable, the fact that the current list
machinery will not support the automatic exclusion of
non-PEOTCPs gives this question real weight: it means that any
list that's not subscribable by everyone requires new members
to be approved manually by the chair or by OASIS
administration. There is nothing we can do about this overhead
in the case of TC lists, but we can at least step around this
in the case of discussion lists by just allowing public
subscription. While the motivation here is mainly practical
(the recommendation can be effected by simply setting a switch
in the mail server interface), allowing the public to subscribe
could also have the advantage of promoting new OASIS
memberships among persons who become engaged in the initial
discussion phase and want to follow it into TC work.
PAC recommendation: That the first paragraph of Subsection 1(b)
of the TC Policy be amended to add the words "publicly
subscribable" before "discussion list."
Before amendment:
Any group of at least three PEOTCPs shall be authorized
to begin a discussion list for the purpose of forming a
TC by submitting to OASIS TC administration the following
items: [...]
After amendment:
Any group of at least three PEOTCPs shall be authorized
to begin a publicly subscribable discussion list for the
purpose of forming a TC by submitting to OASIS TC
administration the following items: [...]
==================================================================
Amendment 6: IPR compliance
Problem: We wish to do everything we can to prevent companies
from participating in standards work in a way that creates
hidden dependencies on their patents or copyrights. But we
keep returning to the facts that (a) the PAC does not own the
IPR policy, which is a creation of the board, and (b) it is
very difficult to devise a method whereby OASIS member
representatives can testably certify the state of their
knowledge regarding their company's IPR. After a great deal of
discussion last year followed by more discussion in this recent
review of the issues, the best we can do is to add a provision
that should make it impossible for OASIS member representatives
in a TC to deny that they were aware of the IPR policy.
PAC recommendation: That a new item (g) be added to the
checklist of items (first paragraph of Section 2 of the TC
Policy) that must be submitted by a TC when proposing a
standard:
(g) a statement from the chair of the TC certifying that all
members of the TC have been provided with a copy of the
OASIS IPR policy.
The revised paragraph would then read as follows:
A technical committee (TC) as defined in Section 1 of this
Policy that has approved and published a committee
specification may simultaneously or at some later time
recommend that the specification be made an OASIS
standard. Upon resolution of the TC to move the
specification forward, its chair shall submit the following
items to OASIS: (a) a formal specification that is a valid
member of its type; (b) appropriate documentation for the
specification; (c) a clear English-language summary of the
specification; (d) certification by at least three OASIS
member organizations that they are successfully using the
specification; (e) an account of or pointer to votes and
comments received in any earlier attempts to standardize
substantially the same specification, together with the
originating TC's response to each comment; (f) a pointer to
the publicly visible comments archive for the originating
TC; and (g) a statement from the chair of the TC certifying
that all members of the TC have been provided with a copy of
the OASIS IPR policy.
==================================================================
Amendment 7: Mail lists
Problem: Each OASIS TC is provided with two mailing lists: a
general list for use by the members of the TC and a comment
list that allows people outside of the TC to register comments
on the work of the TC. The way that membership is controlled
in these two lists has created management problems for OASIS
administration and the TC chairs. The solution is to make all
comment lists publicly subscribable and limit subscriptions to
all TC general lists by default to the members of the TC
(remembering that any OASIS member can read such lists via the
archive).
Recommendation: That the first two paragraphs of Subsection
1(i) of the TC Policy be amended as follows:
Before amendment:
(i). TC Visibility.
All TC electronic mail lists shall be archived for the
duration of the corporation, and all TC mail archives
shall be publicly visible. Each TC shall be provided upon
formation with a general list and a comment list. Every
PEOTCP shall be able to subscribe to the general mailing
list of any TC, but only members of that TC shall be able
to post to it. The minutes of each TC meeting shall be
published to that TC's general list.
The comment list of a TC shall be open to contributions
from every PEOTCP, and may also be enabled to accept
comments from other groups or from the public at large by
resolution of the TC. TCs shall not be required to
respond to comments.
[...]
After amendment:
(i). TC Visibility.
All TC electronic mail lists shall be archived for the
duration of the corporation, and all TC mail archives
shall be publicly visible. Each TC shall be provided upon
formation with a general list and a comment list.
Subscription to the general list shall be automatic for
members of the TC and available, by resolution of the TC,
to other individual PEOTCPs. The minutes of each TC
meeting shall be published to that TC's general list.
The comment list of a TC shall be publicly subscribable.
TCs shall not be required to respond to comments.
[...]
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