Re: Default Process: Other Committees

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 21:26 1999 11 17 -0800, Jon Bosak wrote:
>2. On the other hand, all the TRs were approved by votes of
>   the membership; so as far as I can tell, the TRs themselves
>   are perfectly sound.  I think that their procedural status is
>   the same as if they had simply been proposed to the membership
>   in an open meeting at which a quorum was present.

I'm not paying a lot of attention to the current discussion
(there appear to be a lot of better qualified people with more
time than I to dedicate to this, and I trust whatever they do),
but I don't understand any discussion of the status of past TRs.
How can past TRs have a problematic status wrt any process being
developed now?  In what way could their status possibly be in
question in any way?  In what way was the process that developed
TRs flawed or suspect?

All of the SGML Open bylaws were about meetings of and voting within
SGML Open *as a group*.  At no time did any of us on the board ever think
that anything in the bylaws had anything to do with any committees (or
subcommittees or anything else).  We never voted in committees, we
only voted as SGML Open members [rereading my earlier email, I realize
I may have given the impression that we did sometimes vote in the 
Technical Committee, but that was not the case].  Committees/subcommittees
were just subsets of the SGML Open membership (open to anyone in the 
proper tiers of membership) that wanted to work on a particular task.
They had/needed no quorum, rules of membership, or rules of voting.  
They were not constituted by the board.  I don't know how this fits 
with Robert's Rules, but I also don't see how this contradicts anything 
in Roberts rules.  [We used to have a saying on the SGML Open board 
that we were an informally run group--we used "Bob's rules".]

>The part that really puzzles me is this: under the bylaws, there are
>only two kinds of committees: committees of the board (which are
>further subdivided per art. 5 into executive committees and advisory
>committees) 

The executive committee was to consist of a subset of the *board*
and was to make day-to-day decisions in the name of the board.  It
is irrelevant for our purposes.

The advisory committee originally included Goldfarb, Gilbane,
Jonathan Seybold, and someone else.  They were there just to 
give the original SGML Open some name recognition and, in
theory, to give the board some folks we could go to for advice.  
The second board (the board elected to start serving in August 1995) 
abolished this committee.  This wording about advisory board is just 
a left over of this artifact.  It, too, is irrelevant for our purposes.

I can practically guarantee you that none of the "committee"
wording of Article 5 was ever meant to refer to those subdivisions
of the Marketing and Technical Track called "committees" or
"subcommittees".  You can play parliamentarian with the bylaws
if that helps you come up with a process you like now, but I'm
giving you the historical perspective on what the board thought
the bylaws meant when we revised them in July 1995 to read as
they do.
 
>and committees of the membership (which are implied by
>art. 13 sect. 8, second para).  

All of Article 13 is about meetings of the SGML Open membership.
Any reference to "meeting" in this article is about meetings of
the entire membership and have nothing to do with meetings of
any marketing or technical committees or subcommittees.  Nothing
in the bylaws was put there meaning to refer to any substructure
within the marketing and technical tracks. 

>I'm still not sure whether our old
>Technical Committee was a committee of the board or a committee of the
>membership.  

I don't know what that means.  I'm not sure it means anything per
the SGML Open bylaws, since the bylaws don't say anything in this
regard.  Let's not call it a committee if that's confusing the issue.
The thing we called the TechCte was an email list that consisted of
anyone who wanted to be on it.  We also had smaller, topic-centric
email lists.  Sometimes the TechCte (including all those on the
various subcommittees) had a face-to-face in which any SGML Open
member could attend.  Sometimes this collection produced a draft
Technical Resolution that the SGML Open membership at large voted
on, and then it became an SGML Open Techical Resolution.  There is
nothing in the bylaws about Technical Resolutions either.

>Paul says:
>
>| The Technical Committee just always existed.

Or, alternatively, it never existed.  You appear to be trying to
place too much semantics onto the term. 

>I guess that this will remain a Blessed Mystery.  I don't think it's
>worth our time now to try to sort it out.  I think that what we should
>do instead is to put all the design work aside for a moment and figure
>out how to put our present committees on track.

I guess here's where I'll go back and let you folks work out what
makes sense now.  Let me know if you want me to explain more what
used to be or what the bylaws meant to those of us who signed them.

paul