Minutes of PROMCODE TC call of May 27, 2021

[Tsutomu Kamimura <tomk@nanzan.jp>]

Describe telecon May 27, 2021 

Agenda 

Scribe nomination 

Roll Call 

Next meeting: June 10, 2021 

Voting Rights Held by: 

• Kazuo Yabuta 
• Masaki Wakao 
• Tom Kamimura 
• Shigeaki Matsumoto 
• Shinji Matsuoka 
• Hiroyuki Yoshida 

Chair: Tom Kamimura (acting) 

Scribe: Tom Kamimura 

Attendees: 

• Tom Kamimura 
• Masaki Wakao 
• Hiroyuki Yoshida 
• Kazuo Yabuta 
• Shigeaki Matsumoto 
• Shinji Matsuoka 

Discussions 

1. Membership issue of three members (Yabuta-san, Yoshida-san and Kamimura) 

Kamimura shared his communication with Chet regarding the membership options for the three TC members. Yabuta-san, Yoshida-san and myself for the PROMCODE TC. Here is a copy of Chet's note. Text in normal font is my questions to Chet and the bold text is Chet's reply. 

The first question is what happens to the current contributors of PROMCODE TC if Nanzan University closes the project and withdraws from OASIS. 

The University cannot close the project. They can only decline to renew their membership and withdraw. In that case, all Nanzan representatives on projects would have their personal accounts closed and they would be removed from the project rosters. The representatives from Fujitsu, IBM, and NEC would remain active on the roster. They would have to elect a new Chair in order to stay active. 

Can the three members currently participating in the TC from Nanzan University continue as members who do not belong to OASIS member organizations? 

No. They would be removed from the roster. We cannot let some organizations participate for free. it would not be fair to our other members. There is an Associate Member option for organizations that do not want to officially join OASIS but are willing to sign our Membership Agreement and allow an employee to participate. However, that is only good for one person and the cost is close to the cost of an academic membership anyway.  It appears that Nanzan's renewal date is in November if I read the record correctly. So there is time yet.

We are talking to some organization who may be interested in PROMCODE to see if they can host current TC members of PROMCODE as their staff members. If that happens, does the organization have to become an OASIS member for the current TC members to continue? 

Yes, the organization would have to join. A person working on a TC for xxx company must be an employee or contractor of the company. This is because the person is making IP contributions on their behalf and the company has confirmed, by approving their joining the TC, that they can commit the company's IP. So, the organization would have to become an OASIS member and assert to us that they are on their staff, which we confirm via the staff's email addresses.

f the answers to above are not favorable to us, I see a possibility for PROMCODE to join the OSLC project which is an OASIS Open project. According to the rule of OASIS Open project, a contributor to TC does not have to be an OASIS member. Is that right? If we pursue that possibility, what actions do you see we need to do? 

This is true. You do not need to be OASIS members to contribute content to an Open Project. To join the project's Project Governing Board and have a vote on questions that come, you would still have to become a project sponsor which requires a sponsorship fee. If you did not join the project's PGB, what the members of the TC could choose to do is contribute the current work to the OSLC Open Project. (We would need to work out the details for how this could be done). I would recommend that you approach Jim, Andrew, and Axel and explore this with them. As the OSLC PGB members, they have to approve new work coming in. If they supported it, the work could be brought into a repository in the OSLC project GitHub and you could continue the work there. Approval of the work would rest with the PGB. We can discuss further if you want to explore that as an option. Again, our sincere best wishes to Aoyama-san. Please let me know if this gives you the answers you need to move forward. 

In summary, there are four options at this stage. 

• Proceed with the current membership for the three members until the OASIS membership of Nanzan University ends in November. 
• Explore the possiblity of associate membership for the three members. 
• Continue to explore the possiblity of getting support from IPA. See below on this. 
• Consider the possiblity of moving to OASIS Open Project 

Since each requires some time to become certain, Yabuta-san suggested that we should pursue multiple paths for now. It was agreed. In addition, soliciting more possible members was discussed including someone graduated from Aoyama Lab of Nanzan University who currently works for Fujitsu and some people from Hitach. 

2. Support by IPA (Information Promotion Agency) 

• IPA is a goverment agency to implement Japanese government's IT policies under the supervision of METI. Kamimura and Yabuta-san had a meeting with METI on May 20th to introduce OASIS PROMCODE work to them. They showed a strong interest and said that they will see if the work can be related to existing projects at IPA. The second meeting is scheduled for May 28th. 

3. Others. 

Matsumoto-san pointed out that the current vocab and shape ttl files have contents that are commented out. It was agreed that we should remove such contents to make them clean and easier to read. 

Actions 

• Kamimura will start the process of electing a new TC chair following the process Chet explained before. 
• Yabuta-san will contact a person in Fujitsu to see if he can join the PROMCODE using his membership at Nanzan University. 
• Matsumoto-san to remove contents that are commented out from promcode-vacab.ttl and promcoe-shapes.ttl files. 

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Created by T. Kamimura