RE: [chairs] OASIS Organizational Voting is Somewhat Absurd?

["Patil, Sanjay" <sanjay.patil@sap.com>]

 

I too see the problem. As other mentioned earlier, I think the requirement of a broader OASIS membership voting exists primarily to ensure high quality of OASIS standards. However in reality most companies would have a policy of  'don't vote if you don't care'  which would immediately put the chair(s) of the not-so-popular specs in a disadvantageous position and their only resort may be to seek favors from unrelated OASIS membership to cast their (meaningless) votes. Not a good situation.

 

So I guess there is a problem and we may all want to fix it. However any solution we come up with should also meet the original goal of ensuring high quality OASIS standards.

 

I like the idea of setting up domains but I would also suggest to raise the bar higher in setting up a domain (by requiring certain minimum membership, a review and approval of OASIS membership/TAB/Board, etc). Basically so that the process does not get easily abused. Another point in the process where the quality bar can be raised higher is by requiring TCs to produce material related to compliance testing and by requiring certain interoperability testing to occur (as opposed to merely a certification of use by three member companies).

 

Thanks,

Sanjay Patil

Co-chair, Web Services Reliable Exchange (WS-RX) TC.

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From: Bohren, Jeffrey [mailto:Jeff_Bohren@BMC.com]
Sent: Thursday, Sep 29, 2005 10:26 AM
To: chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [chairs] OASIS Organizational Voting is Somewhat Absurd?

First, I agree the process is flawed. It is going to get exponentially worse as OASIS grows (# new TCs times the # new organizations).

 

Let me make a suggestion that is similar to Rob’s.

 

1)       OASIS would establish a set of domains.

2)       Each OASIS member organization would elect to participate in N number of domains.

3)       Each TC could chose to submit specs to a specific domain or OASIS at large. If a TC submits the spec for “domain approval”, the vote threshold should be higher since it is a more focus group.

 

If you want a good first cut at the list of domains, go to the OASIS home page and look at the “Committees by Category” box.

 

Some specs really should be approved by OASIS at large because they are very general. For example if there is a new version of UDDI, I would see that as being an OASIS wide vote. The vast majority of specs, however, should be voted on by a subset of organizations.

 

 

Jeff Bohren

BMC

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Duane Nickull [mailto:dnickull@adobe.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 12:53 PM
To: Wachob, Gabe; chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [chairs] OASIS Organizational Voting is Somewhat Absurd?

 

“Does anyone else feel this way?”

 

I agree that it may be suboptimal.  Do you have any concrete plans or suggestions for our perusal?  While voting to approve something you haven’t read is a relatively hollow gesture, it has to be balanced against the other end of the spectrum whereby a group of three members could get together, have a FUDfest and create some meaningless specification and get it approved as an OASIS standard.  This lack of scrutiny by all of us weakens the perception and credibility of OASIS as a credible standards development organization.

 

I would be interested in hearing concrete proposals and am open to considering a new model if others are keen too.

 

Duane