Re: [office-formula] Proposal: Work ONLY electronically after initialtelecomm, except when we decide otherwise

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

I said:
>> So I propose this: at the upcoming formula teleconference,
>> we should vote on this proposal:
>> "As a standing rule, we agree to work electronically except when
>> we SPECIFICALLY decide otherwise."

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> I'll make sure I'm at the teleconference and vote in favour.

Great!

> "stop participating", but later in your email you included a definition "to 
> fail to vote for two different (consecutive?) voting periods".

Yes, consecutive.  To re-instate, you have to be present for
two consecutive meetings. For email, I'd interpret
that as voting "present" for two votes.

Most voting only requires a "Simple Majority Vote"
(# "yes" votes > # "no" votes with a quorum).
But there's a special case I didn't mention:
under OASIS rules, creating a "standing rule" requires a
"Full Majority Vote" (a MAJORITY of ALL the members to vote "yes").
Standing rules affect everyone all the time, so the
majority of all members need to agree to them.  I think this
is an _excellent_ OASIS rule, and very fair.

So if we're going to work electronically,
the majority of ALL SC members need to agree to that.
After all, we'll all be affected by the result.  Makes sense to me.

>> Note IN PARTICULAR that ALL formal work of this group MUST
>> be via OASIS-controlled mechanisms.  So if we use a Wiki, it MUST
>> be OASIS' Wiki (it's MoinMoin).
>
> I don't realy care where the wiki is, but I have a question: what are 
> the restrictions on "informal" work? Can we have an "informal" meeting 
> on IRC and then give a "formal" synopsis on-list? (perhaps with a vote).

Well, let's look at the rules, which are here:
  http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php
Here's what they say:
"2.8 TC Visibility
     The official copies of all resources of the TC and its associated 
subcommittees, including web pages, documents, email lists and any other 
records of discussions, must be located only on facilities designated by 
OASIS. TCs and SCs may not conduct official business or technical 
discussions, store documents, or host web pages on servers or systems 
not designated by OASIS. All web pages, documents, ballot results and 
email archives of all TCs and SCs shall be publicly visible."

So there MUST be a record of any subcommittee discussion available to
the public.  That's for everyone's protection... that way it will be
EASY to prove that the specification was developed in an open manner.

That's not the clearest answer to your question, sadly... so we
can look at common practice.
OASIS _requires_ that external parties host (and pay for) any
teleconferencing... it doesn't supply teleconferencing at all.
If the IRC was used like a teleconference, MAYBE it would be okay.
But I think I'd want a clear okay from OASIS admins before doing that;
I want to stay away from gray areas and keep things CLEARLY open.

I'm not sure it'll matter to us, anyway.  It appears very unlikely
that there will be a time where we could all show up on IRC anyway :-(.
Yes, it's normal for teleconferences (and physical
meetings) to proceed without some attendees. But it's clear that any
time we pick will discriminate against SOMEONE... so let's use
email and other asynchronous mechanisms instead, and
have absolutely NO discrimination.

I don't think our issues are unique.  Information Technology has
globalized; as the time zones have spread, it's become increasing
impractical to have synchronous meeting times.

--- David A. Wheeler