Dear OASIS members,
Over the past two and a half years, the OASIS Board has considered changes to our project policy documents based on feedback from you, the members, the people who actively do the work.
At its meeting on July 22, 2020, the Board approved a set consolidated changes to the Committee Operations Process, the TC Process, the Defined Terms, and the Naming Directives. Because these changes include some significant changes to current practice, the Board would like to hear your comments.
This email starts a 30-day member comment period. When the review is completed, our Board will review any comments and then propose a final set of approved documents as well as determining their effective date.
As a member-centric and member-run organization, your opinions matter. The attached ZIP file contains redlined copies of each policy document. A brief summary of the changes is included below. Please take some time to review the documents and share your thoughts with us. You can share your comments by sending them to our archived discussion list at
oasis-member-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org or, if you prefer, share them directly with me or with any OASIS board member or staff.
Thank you in advance for your time & feedback!
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Summary of changes to Committee Operations Process, TC Process, Defined Terms and Naming Directives.
The major changes:
* We changed pronouns to be gender-neutral throughout.
* We simplified the work product workflow. (A separate communication will be forthcoming describing these changes.)
Going forward, we have eliminated the confusing and duplicative Committee Specification Public Review Drafts and the Candidate OASIS Standards. Your group will now produce Committee Specification Drafts. Public reviews will be done on the CSDs and, after you have approved Committee or Project Specifications, the CS or PS will be put forward for the 60-day public review preceding the Call for Consent as OASIS Standard. We hope this will address long-standing confusion over the conflicting numbering schemes as well as eliminate unnecessary duplication of publications.
A substantial number of the changes you'll see are simply eliminations of references to the eliminated artifacts.
* We modified the rules on handling content post-approval to allow TC Administration to work with the editors to correct problems discovered during publishing process. We agree that it is to everyone's advantage to put forward the highest quality work from our projects. We hope you will take advantage of this to fix those niggling glitches that we come across during preparation of your work.
* We added a new section 1.10 to the TC Process titled "TC Vitality." TCs will now be asked to review and confirm (or modify) their charter once every four years.
* We added a requirement to Committee Process section 1.4 Chairs that every two years, a committee must reappoint its chairs. Sitting chairs are allowed to stand but must be reconfirmed by committee vote.
The minor changes:
* We clarified the requirement that meeting minutes must be posted to the TC's general email list. We hope this will help eliminate the hiccups when TC Admin has to postpone working on a support request until the minutes are sent to the mail list.
* We removed a discrepancy between the definitions of Material and Non-Material changes.
* We clarified an ambiguity about how a Member gains voting rights during a 60 day period if less than 2 meetings are held.
* We shortened and simplified the Leave of Absence policy. Now, a first LoA request is considered automatically approved.
* We clarified that changing employers does not change a member's voting rights or other status within a committee.
* We clarified that a TC can use the electronic ballot tool to record votes during a TC meeting.
* We changed references from normative / non-normative to normative and informative to be more in line with other SDO practice.
Again, thank you for your time & feedback.
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/chetÂ
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Chet Ensign
Chief Technical Community StewardOASIS: Advancing open source & open standards for the information society
http://www.oasis-open.org
Mobile: +1 201-341-1393Â