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Subject: RE: [rights] tyranny of the majority but no consensus
Folks, Dimitry, good e-mail. I agree with Dimitry. I do not think it is fair or gentle-personly to question Hari's motives or methods. With respect to motives, Hari has been more than fair and patient during all the discussions. With respect to methods, OASIS has well-defined methods to handle stuff. Whenever issues were raised, they were put to a vote. I think we are running fairly by the Robert's rules. BTW, I do not get this business of "taking steps to address the bad feelings caused by the votes at the F2F". What do we do ? Buy the folks some "spirits" ? Have quotas ? Or alternate between majority and minority for success of a vote ? These are all beyond the chair of an OASIS TC. Consensus is better, but in many cases voting is practical. Folks, we need to move on. Also I favor evolutionary work with incremental progress. It is not an all-or-nothing preposition. cheers | -----Original Message----- | From: Radbel, Dmitry [mailto:dmitry.radbel@umusic.com] | Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 7:42 PM | To: 'Bob Glushko'; rights@lists.oasis-open.org; | rights-requirements-help@lists.oasis-open.org; | karl.best@oasis-open.org | Cc: mnemonic@well.com; murray Maloney; liora Alschuler; | rachna Dhamija | Subject: RE: [rights] tyranny of the majority but no consensus | | | Reading the steady stream of e-mails today which largely | share the same subject, I figured I'll reply to the first | one. I have joined the RLTC only two weeks ago so I have not | witnessed how this sorry situation has come about, but | clearly not all is well in RLTC. I find it particularly | disturbing that some personally attack Hari Reddy's conduct. | Reading some of the e-mails, he's been accused of improperly | managing the TC process, of not following the rules, of | "shutting down" the participants he does not agree with, and | of ignoring in his analysis some of the submissions. | | My knowledge of and interactions with Hari are limited to | the last week's F2F and yesterday's conference call. I | thought that in both instances he did his best to manage the | meeting and to allow people to speak during a very | contentious debate. I also thought that he rather faithfully | adhered to Robert's Rules, including management of the | voting process. Per some of the e-mails, Hari is practically | obligated to reach consensus rather than allow voting. | Actually, the first TC chair responsibility listed in the | OASIS TC Guidelines is to "keep the TC moving towards | completion of its charter, on schedule." In the long list of | TC chair's duties there is nothing about reaching consensus | (surely it's desirable but not always possible). | | I did not want to base my judgement on a couple of meetings. | But we do have a "paper trail", so I went to to RLTC website | and reviewed the documents, the minutes of the meetings | (from 5/21, 5/29, 6/12, 6/26, 7/10, 7/24, 8/7, and 8/21) and | the e-mail correspondence. The minutes clearly show that the | schedule that Hari is obligated to uphold - including | timelines for draft requirements gathering and disposition - | has been set quite a while ago and via a democratic process. | I found the schedule in Hari's e-mail from 7/9 (there might | have been earlier versions) and per minutes of subsequent | meetings it has been reviewed regularly. The "RLTC | Requirements" document indicates multiple iterations - I | went to the e-mail threads and Hari posted all these | iterations asking for comments. I have also found multiple | threads which show that when people had specific and | actionable comments Hari have been addressing them. And the | requirements did not have to be dispositioned by 8/7 - | Hari's documents clearly show that he co | | | | I don't understand the argument that Hari's work is somehow | invalid because requirements were being mapped to the | "initial set". Is the set wrong? Is the mapping wrong? Seems | to me that the point here is that not all of the originally | submitted requirements are presented verbatim - but how | would one produce a meaningful requirements document without | combining 100's of overlapping requirements into a concise | set? And why is it Hari's fault that the requirement for a | royalty free language implementation has been voted down? | How can RLTC promise anyone royalty free language | implementation when the whole area is full of patents? | | I don't understand why RLTC can't have Version 1 of the | requirements and then have further iterations - most of the | requirements documents I have ever dealt with were iterated. | And it does not mean that requirements added in the next | version are some kind of 2nd class citizens. I am reviewing | the requirements and have some comments - but it does not | mean that the TC has to delay its schedule until they are | resolved to my satisfaction. I also don't understand why | trying to synchronize with an international standards body | (the goal which has been clearly stated in the minutes of | the very first meeting on 5/21) is seen as some kind of | sinister plot. Is not having common standards a good idea? | What is the concern? We are not defining rights themselves | but a language for expressing them. | | After reviewing the available documents, I personally think | that Hari did an admirable job of compiling and processing | requirements under difficult conditions. Bob, you are | appalled by the votes (would you still be appalled if they | did not go against you?) and you and others blame much of it | on Hari for supposedly being partial, improperly biasing the | work process, etc. The essense of it seems to be that he has | an opinion which is different from yours and that some | decisions that he has made are disagreeable with you. | Frankly, I find such a personal attack - as you put it - appalling. | | Respectfully, | | Dmitry Radbel, VP Advanced Technology | Universal Music Group | 2220 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404 | Office 310-865-7801 | e-mail: dmitry.radbel@umusic.com | | -----Original Message----- | From: Bob Glushko [mailto:glushko@SIMS.Berkeley.EDU] | Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 10:43 AM | To: rights@lists.oasis-open.org; | rights-requirements-help@lists.oasis-open.org; | karl.best@oasis-open.org | Cc: mnemonic@well.com; murray Maloney; liora Alschuler; | rachna Dhamija | Subject: [rights] tyranny of the majority but no consensus | | | I am going to respond to the note from Mike Godwin below | sent to me and Hari Reddy since I doubt that Hari will. | | I too am appalled by the recent votes at the F2F and on | yesterday's conference call. But neither surprised me. | | In the days before the F2F, I sent Hari several messages | urging restraint in the face of the mounting pressure from | the MPEG constituency in the TC to ignore the fact that the | requirements process hadn't reached consensus but he didn't | reply to me. He didn't reply to me afterwards either when I | suggested he take steps to address the bad feelings caused | by the votes at the F2F. He has steadily lost the | impartiality with which he began as the TC chairman and now | predictably sides with the "party line" as defined by | Content Guard and Microsoft, ignoring the fact that a | substantial proportion of the members are opposed to the | "damn the requirements process, full speed ahead" approach | they advocate. | | The critical votes were 11 to 10 and 12 to 9 on Thursday and | 10 to 8 yesterday. This bare majority clearly demonstrates | there is no consensus for moving forward at this pace -- and | also demonstrates that there is little chance that a | specification will be voted out of the TC for submission to | OASIS, since far more than 1/4 of the membership will oppose | it. I am puzzled by the persistence of the MPEG side given | this arithmetic. No specification will be voted out of the | TC without dealing with the full set of requirements | submitted to it. Do the math. | | I understand that some of the member companies in this TC | have strong business interests to "get something out" but I | also believed in its charter. The first goal is said to be: | | Define the industry standard for a rights language that | supports a wide variety of business models and has an | architecture that provides the flexibility to address the | needs of the diverse communities that have recognized the | need for a rights language | | It is clear now that any community other than the MPEG is a | second-class citizen whose requirements will be dealt with | at some unspecified future time. It has been disingenuous to | call for participation by user organizations and by people | who care about legal and regulatory issues and then vote to | suppress any meaningful impact of their contributions. | | bob glushko | | | | | | | X-Sender: mnemonic@brillig.panix.com | Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 22:34:46 -0400 | To: "Reddy, Hari" <Hari.Reddy@CONTENTGUARD.COM>, | "Mike Godwin (E-mail)" <mnemonic@well.com> | From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@well.com> | | Gentlemen, | | I am astonished to hear that the wishes of experts | contributing to the subcommittee were wholly ignored in the | vote this afternoon. | | It seems clear to me that certain corporate members attended | the meeting with the intention of circumventing the wishes | of those who want to see the first version of the REL | accurately express a full range intellectual-property rights. | | I hereby register my protest. I think this was immensely | insensitive on the part of the corporate members, and am | considering whether and how to publicize this subversion of | a purportedly "open" standards process. | | This was the last thing I expected, given the | representations that had been made to me about the | subcommittee's work. In the time we had allotted this | morning, I believe I demonstrated my willingness to help the | committee reach a first edition of its work in a reasonable | amount of time, and I point out that drawing a line with | regard to submissions was my idea. | | I feel an immense sense of betrayal, and I imagine that | other members do too. | | | --Mike | | | | -- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | "I speak the password primeval .... I give the sign of | democracy ...." | --Walt Whitman | Mike Godwin can be reached by phone at 202-637-9800 | His book, CYBER RIGHTS, can be ordered at | http://www.panix.com/~mnemonic | <http://www.panix.com/~mnemonic> . | | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | -- | Robert J. Glushko, Ph.D. | http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~glushko | <http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~glushko> | School of | Information Management & Systems | 102 South Hall | University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-4600 | | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription | manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl> | |
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