Re: [members] OASIS Board approves TC Process change that simplifies handling comments on Candidate OASIS Standards

[Eduardo Gutentag <egutentag@gmail.com>]

It is a pity that the Process Committee (and by extension, the Board) did not take the time or make the effort to clean up the now glaring uncertainties that result from the application of the concepts of non-Material and Substantive Changes to the approval process.

As the Process document now stands, there are defined (line 77) non-Material Changes (and presumed but never defined Material ones) that apply to any  Work Product at any stage, and defined (line 155) Substantive Changes (and presumed but never defined non-Substantive ones) that apply only to an OASIS Standard (and perhaps by extension, but with no basis on the definition itself, that now apply to a Candidate OASIS Standard, as per line 786).

If the Process Committee believes that there is a difference between non-Material and non-Substantive, or between Material and Substantive changes, then that difference should be spelled out by providing a definition both of Material and of non-Substantive.

Otherwise, the currently defined non-Material and the undefined non-Substantive should be merged into one, just as the currently defined Substantive and the undefined Material should be merged into one, with the concomitant elimination of the ambiguous boundaries between all these terms.

Thank you for your attention,

Eduardo Gutentag

On 05/12/2014 12:08 PM, Chet Ensign wrote:

OASIS members, 

The OASIS Technical Committee (TC) Process (https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/tc-process), the policy document governing work at OASIS, is a product of your Board of Directors. At its face-to-face meeting on the 24-25 April 2014, the Board approved an update to the TC Process to clarify a portion of section 3.4 Approval of an OASIS Standard. 

Briefly, in section 3.4.2, Public Review of a Candidate OASIS Standard, any change to a COS no matter how trivial required the Technical Committee to effectively start over and advance a new Working Draft through the approval and public review process. The new addition to the Process allows the TC make minor, non-material changes in response to comments and advance a revised Candidate OASIS Standard to the membership for a vote. This is similar to the process now followed for Committee Specification Drafts with Non-Material Changes. 

Substantive changes will still require that the TC prepare a new Committee Specification Draft and present it for public review. 

You can see the actual changes to the text starting on line 772 of the change-marked PDF file attached to this announcement. 

The updated process is effective as of May 1st. 

Please let me know if you have questions on this change. 

--

/chet 
----------------
Chet Ensign
Director of Standards Development and TC Administration 
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