Proposal: Acknowledgment of Contribution

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Re: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200910/msg00016.html>


Thinking this over a bit more, I think there should be two parts to the
acknowledgment section:

1. First, there should be a statement of the following form:

"During the development of this [document/specification/report] the
following individuals participated as Members of the OASIS OpenDocument
Interoperabilty and Conformance (OIC) TC:

   "John Hancock, The British East India Company
    ...
    "

[Rationale: the names and affiliations are important because of the IPR
rules and the obligation business for specifications.  This is maybe not so
important for a report, but I think it is a material thing even if they were
never on a call or ever posted to the TC List.]

2. Secondly, there should be recognition of all material contributions by
outside parties using the comment list.  (If we had a submission from JTC1,
I would just acknowledge the body, not the individuals.)  Something like,

"The OASIS OIC TC also received public comments that contributed to the
improvement of this [document/specification/report].  The OIC TC
acknowledges the following contributors for their comments:

  " Ethelred the Elder, guesswho@gmail.com
    ... 
    "

[not sure how oic-comment submitters should be acknowledged.  Might need to
contact each of them, especially if an employer name is needed.  Notice the
above wording does not reveal our basis for selection, just that we choose
to acknowledge (some of) them.]

3. One reason for doing this is to encourage contributions and to let people
know in this public manner that we value that.  The other is to establish
that there was an agreement with regard to IPR, our permission to use
contributions, etc.  If a contribution even got us thinking about an issue,
although we didn't use it directly, I would leave that a judgment call.
oic-comment posts that don't contribute anything or ask a meaningful
question can be discounted, of course.

 - Dennis