RE: [oasis-board-comment] Concerns from an OASIS member on the recent TC Process changes

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

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your comments. The OASIS Board has discussed the same and arrived at the following response.

Best wishes,
Sanjay Patil
(On behalf of the OASIS Board of Directors)

The primary purpose behind gathering the Statements of Use for Committee Specifications and referencing them in communications to the OASIS membership is to demonstrate momentum behind the Specifications in the form of industry efforts to implement them. The idea is that knowledge of such implementations may help OASIS members in deciding their vote on ballots for approving the specifications as OASIS Standards.

To ensure that the Statement of Use mechanism continues to support the delivery of quality Specifications, the TC Process requires that any submitted Statements be formally approved by TC resolution. The Process also allows TCs to require that the Statements of Use be accompanied with links to supporting material such that the TC members can properly evaluate them.

By relaxing the requirement that Statements of Use can only come from OASIS members our intent is to encourage broader participation in demonstrating support for the specifications produced by the OASIS TCs. Several smaller TCs have
indicated that they know of multiple implementations of their Specifications but do not have sufficient capacity among the TCs members to satisfy the required number of Statements from OASIS members only.

We believe that OASIS still provides ample benefits of membership to encourage adopters and implementors to join OASIS and participate in TCs. For example:

- Only Statements of Use from OASIS members will be mentioned in press releases and other OASIS announcements;

- Only OASIS members can participate in Interop demos;

- Only OASIS members can participate in webinars or other promotional events.

We believe that the core values and the rich set of services offered by the OASIS organization and OASIS Technical Committees in producing, maintaining and driving adoption of standard specifications will be
the primary reasons for non-OASIS member companies interested in submitting Statements of Use to also consider joining the organization.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chet Ensign [mailto:chet.ensign@oasis-open.org] 
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2012 2:37 PM
To: oasis-board-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: Tim Hudson
Subject: [oasis-board-comment] Concerns from an OASIS member on the recent TC Process changes

Members of the OASIS Board,

Laurent and I received two emails from Tim Hudson of Cryptsoft and a
very active member of the KMIP Technical Committee regarding the
easing of requirements for Statements of Use in the newly effective TC
Process. As Tim has been on the road for several weeks, he asked if I
would forward them to you all and I told him that I would be happy to
do so. I have copied Tim on this email.

His first email was:

--------------------------------
Chet, I'm not sure if you've noted that this is a relaxation of the
rules for a statement of use in terms of conformance that will cause
issues. This updated definition allows a statement of use to be made
where the organisation does not meet the requirements of the
conformance clauses within the specification. I doubt that was the
intent - but that is the effect of the change.

Changing from "successfully using or implementing that specification
in accordance with the conformance clauses" to "successfully used or
implemented that specification in accordance with all or some of its
conformance clauses" has a substantial impact in terms of effectively
lowering the requirements for conformance on implementations to "some"
rather than "all".

Given the challenges we are facing in the KMIP TC with vendor
organisations not conforming to the conformance clauses within the
specification we see this as a major policy change heading in the
wrong direction for OASIS.

I also don't follow the logic in allowing non-OASIS members to make a
statement of use - but that is a separate policy item - as the whole
point of OASIS is to encourage participation and this would at least
in our view discourage participation for organisations if they can
simply make a statement of use and not actually be an OASIS member. If
a technical committee is unable to find three organisations to
participate and make a statement of use then that would suggest that
there is insufficient industry support for such a technical committee
within the OASIS member body.

What is the appropriate process for officially raising concerns about
this policy change?
--------------------------------

I replied with a pointer to the board-comment@ list and with
background on what the change was intended to achieve and what we
considered in developing it. If you would like my text, I'll be happy
to provide it. Tim then wrote:

--------------------------------
On 02/08/2012 06:48, Chet Ensign wrote:
> Regarding SoU as an incentive to join, you are correct that it was
> part of the motivation but we felt that it really hasn't worked that
> way in practice. None of us knew of any companies that had joined
> OASIS in order to submit an SoU and it seemed unlikely that that alone
> would motivate anyone.

There is at least one - Cryptsoft - we started out with an Individual
membership for myself then in order to make a statement of use had to
become a Member and then in order to participate in interop press
activities moved to a Sponsor level. At each point there was a
specific benefit that triggered the next membership level in OASIS. I
know of at least two other organisations in the KMIP TC that look at
the benefits in exactly the same manner - SoU and interop-PR.

I've always felt the levels were actually quite appropriate and that
the costings across the various sized organisations a reasonable
approach to take. It even manages to work well for small sized
companies.

Those barriers you have just removed I think are a step in the wrong
direction - in that these are areas that are critically important to
maintaining the actual value of OASIS membership (participation
benefits) and the value of the end products - actual interoperable
standards which are used by multiple vendors. Anything which impacts
that I think needs to be more carefully considered.

I can understand the competing pressures to lower those barriers to
get more members - but that works against the broader objectives and
actually devalue the participation for the current core members.

As I'm in the bay area at the moment at the tail end of a two week
back-to-back customer visit now isn't the ideal time to write a
separate letter - but Chet and/or Laurent - feel free to forward the
previous email and this one to the board members if you feel it would
assist in the discussions on the topic.

We have found OASIS a wonderful organisation to work with and the
overall TC experiences to date extremely positive. We have encouraged
other companies to join OASIS based on our experiences.
--------------------------------

I leave it to you all to take it from here. Please let me know how I
can assist from here.

Best regards,

/chet
----------------
Chet Ensign
Director of Standards Development and TC Administration
OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
http://www.oasis-open.org

Primary: +1 973-996-2298
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