Re: 012. Criteria for voting membership

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Jon wrote:
| This only addresses membership once a committee has been formed.
| Initializing the membership is a separate question; I think that it
| works through board approval of an initial list of committed
| participants submitted along with the committee charter during the
| previous phase.  A basic assumption is that the committee must meet in
| person at least four times a year as required by the current OASIS
| process for committees; notice how important this rule becomes.

I'm definitely concerned about that.  Even the largest and richest
companies in OASIS make it hard on reps to get funding for four
trips a year.  I would rather follow the IETF model and make the
email discussion normative and the face-to-faces informative.
I know for sure that even if my supervisor
were to do that, it would be no guarantee that upper management 
would back him up the next week, month, quarter, or brainstorm.

And it won't scale.  Assume we have hundreds rather than thousands
of committees; are they to meet at the same facility each quarter?
how are members to participate in multiple committees if they
meet concurrently?  If they don't meet concurrently, how are
participants to get travel budgets approved for many quarterly
meetings?  

The IETF devotes a full and packed week to those groups that have
to meet (for information, not technical work), and the convention
is bursting at the seams.  If it had to do technical work too, it
would take several weeks at a time.

Let's do work via email instead.  It's what we're comfortable
with already, and "all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right 
themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed."

| Any OASIS member or employee of an OASIS member organization can
| attend the face-to-face meetings of any OASIS TC as an observer
| provided notice is given the chair of the TC [insert some procedure
| about notice here].  Observers cannot vote or participate in committee
| deliberations, though they may answer direct informational questions
| put to them by the chair.

Gosh, I think you ought to be able to drop in if there's room in
the room, without advance notice.  Just as you ought to be able
to subscribe to the list to listen, without participating actively.

| A prospective voting member of an OASIS technical committee shall
| attend at least one face-to-face meeting of the committee as an
| observer and shall reaffirm interest in the work of the committee at
| the end of that meeting.  The prospective voting member then becomes
| entitled to participate in the committee's email list and telephone
| conferences (if any), but cannot cast votes until voting status is
| confirmed through attendance at the next regularly scheduled
| face-to-face meeting.

Which may make it hard to do useful work at the first meeting if
the membership hasn't been determined well, as will certainly happen
if a committee is unexpectedly popular.  A small spec might not take
more than a meeting or two.  Note that none of this is necessary
except to support a particular model of voting - the IETF does
without it entirely.
	
| ... In the case of individuals
| representing OASIS member organizations, this requirement can be met
| through the action of another individual representing the same
| organization, but only if that individual has separately qualified as
| a voting member according to the procedure specified above.

You lost me.  The org doesn't have a vote, so why does it matter
that one qualified member is subbing as org rep for another?

| [Procedure for notifying members that they are in danger of losing
| voting status goes here.]
| 
| [Procedure for actually terminating a voting membership goes here.]
| 
| [Procedure for transferring an institutional membership goes here.]
| 
| [Procedure for requesting a leave of absence goes here.]

Need to add procedure for challenging all of the above.  

regards, Terry