[OASIS-Appeal-001] Appeal to the charter clarification recently made by the TOSCA TC

[Chet Ensign <chet.ensign@oasis-open.org>]

Martin, thank you for directing this appeal to TC Administration. Members of the TOSCA TC, please be notifed that I have received the appeal below from Martin Chapman of Oracle and the TAB. 

This appeal has been numbered OASIS-Appeal-001. Please include this number in the subject of any email communications on this matter. 

I will address this appeal following the draft procedures in the attached text file. Specifically, the next steps in handling this communication will be: 

- Determine whether the appeal is valid. 

- Collect and document the facts of the case. 

- Determine what OASIS rules apply to the facts and use them to make a determination. 

- Document the decision and share with all parties involved. 

I will note for the record that we have a conference call scheduled for next Friday, 24 May 2013, to try to resolve this issue. I will send out the call details for anyone who wishes to attend. 

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding the appeal or the next steps. 

Best regards, 

/chet 

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

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Martin Chapman <martin.chapman@oracle.com> wrote:

OASIS TC Administrator,

 

On 1^st May 2013 TC Admin announced to OASIS Members that the TOSCA TC had voted to clarify its charter, the TC ballot for which passed successfully on 16^th April 2013: https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/members/201305/msg00001.html

 

We understand that there was discussion about whether a charter clarification or a re-chartering was appropriate, each of which require a different process as laid out in sections 2.11 and 2.12, respectively, of the TC Process.

 

Having read the announcement and the red-line charter changes, it is our belief that the wrong process was used, and we request that TC Admin invalidate the charter clarification ballot and require the TOSCA TC to apply the re-chartering process as laid out in 2.12. We reached this conclusion by studying the Scope of Work and Out of Scope sections of the original charter with those of the new charter.

 

The problem is that the new charter places an item within the scope of the TC which the original charter had explicitly declared as out of scope, thus widening not narrowing the scope of the TC. The original charter had the following wording in the Out of Scope Section:

 

1. The definition of concrete cloud services, i.e. the definition of concrete component types, relationship types, and topology templates. However, standardization of a basic set of concrete component types, relationship types and properties is intended to be enabled by this work, and could begin in parallel with this project, with appropriate coordination.

The new charter has the following wording in the Scope of Work section:

 

3. Standardization of a basic set of non-vendor specific, concrete component types, relationship types and properties, which includes all attributes of the type and all contained elements.

 

and has removed the following text from the out of scope section:

 

, and could begin in parallel with this project, with appropriate

coordination.

The original charter specified that work on standardizing concrete component types, whether vendor specific or not, would be done in other, yet to be chartered, Technical Committees. Changing this and bringing this work into the TOSCA TC widens the scope of the original TC and increases its IPR scope. Furthermore, the clarification of vendor vs. non-vendor specific components is immaterial, since the result of the standardization process would render them all non-vendor specific. When the IPR scope of a TC is widened, TC Members acquire new obligations that need to be considered within Member organizations.

 

As members of the TAB  we are concerned about the long term integrity of the TC Process, and are  worried that  the charter modifications above - if accepted as a charter  clarification - would set a bad precedent for other TCs. We therefore request that based on the widening of the IPR scope in the new charter, the TC should be re-chartered as per 2.12 of the TC process. 

 

Regards,

 

      Martin Chapman (Oracle)

      Patrick Durusau (Individual)

      Jacques Durand (Fujitsu Limited)

 

 

--

Martin Chapman | Standards Strategy & Policy EMEA
Mobile: +353 87 179 0627

ORACLE Ireland

Oracle is committed to developing practices and products that help protect the environment

 

 

--

/chet 
----------------
Chet Ensign
Director of Standards Development and TC Administration 
OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
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Appeals at OASIS 

I have an assignment to draft a proposed set of procedures for handling appeals at OASIS. I have taken this to include not only appeals within OASIS but also appeals arising from outside of OASIS, for example, an appeal on a proposal for ANS Standard. 

Here is a first pass. We can discuss at our next TAB meeting. 

For the purposes of this procedure, an appeal is a written communication to OASIS asserting a violation or misapplication of OASIS rules or, in the case of a liaison activity, potentially involving the rules of the other organization (e.g. ANSI Essential Requirements) and, optionally, seeking a redress. 

For the purposes of this procedure, the entity deciding the appeal shall be called the referee. 

1. OASIS must have an address of record for receiving appeals. To ensure that the address allows for written appeals in both electronic and paper form, we should have both an email address of record and a mailing address of record. 

1.a The mailing address of record should be the mailing address of the OASIS headquarters. The appeal can be addressed to either TC Administration or to the Board of Directors. 

1.b The email address of record should have 'appeals' in its name. Rather than have two and possibly confuse people on which to use, I suggest we set up a new, public, moderated list at oasis-appeals@lists.oasis-open.org. TC Administration, the Board, the TAB and OASIS staff would be subscribed to the list. 

The list should accept input from anyone but it should not be a list for discussion. That is why I suggest it be moderated. 

Until such an address is set up, I suggest that appeals to TC Admin go to tc-administration@ and appeals to the board go to oasis-board-comment@.  

2. An appeal sent on paper will be transcribed or summarized onto the emailing address of record. 

3. Receipt of an appeal will be acknowledged. For email, the acknowledgement will be sent to the email address of record. For paper, the acknowledgement will be sent to the sender on OASIS letterhead. 

4. If the appeal does not designate to whom it is being made, the assumption will be that the appeal starts with TC Administration. If the appeal is to the Board, and the Board determines upon review that it should have started with TC Administration, the Board will refer it to TC Administration. In either situation, the person making the appeal will be notified of the action taken. 

5. The appeal will be numbered. All subsequent communications regarding the appeal will use that number. The format for the number will be 

OASIS-Appeal-### 

Where ### is a sequential number starting at 001. 

6. The referee handling the appeal will take the following actions: 

6.a  Acknowledge the appeal to its sender, inform them of who is handling the appeal, what steps will happen next and give them the appeal number. If the appeal involves another party and that party has not been copied on the appeal, the referee will notify the party of the appeal.  

6.b  Determine the validity of the appeal. If an appeal does not arise from some concrete action or lack of action or does not otherwise have some basis for action, the appeal can be rejected. For example, if the appeal is against a written policy of the TC Process document, the referee can forward it to the Board Process Committee for consideration but reject the appeal as invalid. If the appeal is made outside of a time frame documented in an OASIS policy document, the appeal can be dismissed. 

6.c  Communicate with parties as necessary to find and document the facts underlying the appeal. Any communication shall include all parties but shall not take place on the email list of record. The final list of facts shall be included in the written decision of the referee.  

6.d  Decide on the rules that apply to the situation and apply those rules to the facts. 

Note that the appellante may or may not assert which rules have been broken when sending the appeal but the referee is not obliged to apply those rules. It is the responsibility of the referee to determine what rules are involved appropriately. 
 
Note that all the facts found need not be applicable to the ruling. For example, if the appealante states that they communicated with a TC on a particular date and that date has no bearing under the rule to be applied, the referee can note the fact but conclude that it was not relevant. 

6.e  Prepare a written decision on the appeal and communicate it to the appealante and to any other parties involved. 

The written decision shall consist of: a summary of the appeal and the decision, a restatement of the appeal, a summary of the facts, a description of the applicable rule and reasoning on how the rules apply, the final decision. 

The written decision, if by TC Administration, shall also include instructions on how the appealante my appeal this decision to the Board of Directors.    

7. The written decision shall be sent to the email address of record using the appeal number in the subject line. If the original appeal was sent on paper, then the decision will also be sent in writing to the appealante. 

8. Appeals to the Board should be discussed and decided in Board meetings. The Board can refer an appeal to an appropriate Subcommittee of the Board. The deliberation on the appeal need not be minuted but the final decision should be taken by vote and minuted and the decision sent to the appealante and to the email address of record.