Draft of BS 0

[Jon Bosak <bosak@boethius.eng.sun.com>]

Proposed language for Basic Structural Decision BS 0
Jon Bosak 2000.02.17

Note that this is for discussion by the OASIS PAC and has no
official standing yet.

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BS 0. Filtering and interTC coordination

1. To remain scalable over an unlimited number of technical
   specification activities, OASIS can provide a lightweight
   administrative infrastructure through which procedural issues
   can be escalated, but it will not have the means to provide a
   control infrastructure to make and enforce policy regarding TC
   initiation and coordination.  Thus, OASIS should provide
   administrative oversight (chiefly so that procedural
   irregularities can be appealed) but not coordination per se.

2. Approval of a new TC shall be conditioned on formal criteria
   (e.g., properly formed statement of purpose, deliverables,
   meeting schedule, minimum number of members committed to the
   meeting schedule, sponsors for phone conferences, hosts for
   face-to-face meetings), but not on its intent or its actual or
   potential overlap with other TCs or existing industry efforts
   outside of OASIS.  An explicit example of a situation that
   OASIS shall not attempt to resolve is the creation of a TC in
   direct competition with an existing TC in the same problem
   space.

3. Notification shall be pushed to the OASIS membership at every
   phase change in the process (e.g., list formation, TC proposal,
   charter publication, TC formation, publication of each working
   draft, release of final committee specification, call for
   implementation, call for approval as an OASIS standard) and
   such notification shall be world-readable in the relevant OASIS
   archives.  The process shall therefore rely on the oversight
   provided by communities of interest to ensure the
   identification of possible conflicts.

4. One or more formal mechanisms shall be provided whereby a
   certain number of OASIS members can notify one or more TCs of
   the existence of an issue needing resolution among TCs and
   request coordination to resolve the issue.

5. One or more formal mechanisms (e.g., the Motion to Connect)
   shall be provided whereby multiple TCs can coordinate their
   efforts if they mutually agree to do so.

6. If TCs fail to resolve conflicts between their efforts,
   resolution shall in the general case not escalate up through
   the organization but shall instead be determined by the market
   during the implementation phase following approval of committee
   specifications.  OASIS control in this case shall be exercised
   in the eventual determination of whether to approve one or more
   of the conflicting specifications as OASIS Standards.