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Subject: Request for agenda item: Revisions to TC Policy
Hello Patrick, On behalf of the Process Advisory Committee, I'd like to request that an item titled "Revisions to TC Policy" be added to the agenda of the phone meeting of the OASIS Board of Directors scheduled for 2 August 2001. In accordance with the agreement of 18 April 2001 between the PAC and the TAC regarding the direction forward for OASIS technical committees, the PAC has developed a list of proposed revisions to the OASIS TC process. The PAC requests the Board to consider and approve these changes, detailed in the document below, at its meeting 2 August. Best regards, Jon Bosak Chair, OASIS Process Advisory Committee ################################################################## PAC Recommendations for Changes to the OASIS TC Policy The OASIS Process Advisory Committee (PAC) was chartered by the OASIS board in 1999 to develop a scalable process for OASIS TC committees. It met frequently by phone and in person to create a new process that was finalized in June 2000 and adopted by the board as an amendment to the OASIS bylaws at board meetings in July and August 2000. In March 2001, the board removed the amendments from the bylaws, restated the TC process as the "OASIS OPEN TECHNICAL COMMITTEE POLICY," and expressed its desire to exercise more control over the process. The PAC met 18 April 2001 with members of the board's Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) to work out a plan that would accommodate the desire of the board to create technical initiatives under its direct control while preserving a process for member initiatives that has received widespread attention and approval in the XML developer community. As recorded in the minutes of that meeting: The chair proposed, and it was agreed, to attack these issues by dividing OASIS initiatives into two categories: "OASIS Member Initiatives" that would explicitly be labeled as such to distinguish them from initiatives of the board, and "OASIS Portfolios" that would be created by the board in order to foster and coordinate work following a particular technical direction. Member initiatives would operate according to the current TC procedures but would be carefully distinguished in announcements from OASIS Portfolios and would be subject to board veto during the 15 days provided by the process for administrative review. OASIS Portfolios would each operate under the terms of a "Program Plan" or "Portfolio Charter" that would describe the technical framework under which each official OASIS effort would operate, and they would be directed by a coordinating body or technical advisory board that would (for example) be composed of the chairs of each TC in the portfolio. The PAC passed the following resolution: That the PAC, with input from the TAC, develop a new section of the TC process that distinguishes formal, coordinated OASIS initiatives ("Portfolios") from uncontrolled Member Initiatives. At its meeting 30 May 2001, the PAC discussed this further and concluded that the interests of the board would best be served if the PAC met another time or two to consider some changes (mainly bug fixes) to the existing TC process, which would continue in existence as the process for "uncontrolled member initiatives," and then, after seeing these changes through adoption by the board and meeting with the board to explain the plan arrived at with the TAC, to formally dissolve so that the board could appoint a new committee to develop the new "OASIS portfolio" process described above for governing technical initiatives of the board. In furtherance of this plan, Karl Best formed a list of 20 issues that had been raised regarding the TC process, and the PAC met on 13 June 2001 and 27 June 2001 to consider each of these issues. In the case of seven of these issues, the PAC determined that resolution would require changes to the TC Policy. This document sets forth the recommended changes for action by the board. Since the PAC was working from the language adopted by the board last year in the context of the then-existing OASIS bylaws, editorial changes have been made in the following to align the directions given for amendment in the PAC resolutions of 13 and 17 June with the section numbering used in the TC Policy published by the board in its minutes for 12 March. The rationale for each recommendation has also been lightly edited to fit this format; for full details, see the PAC minutes for 13 and 17 June. Respectfully submitted, Jon Bosak Chair, OASIS Process Advisory Committee ################################################################## Amendment 1: Require OASIS membership before proposing to join TC The first paragraph of Section 1(d) of the current TC Policy reads as follows: The first meeting of a TC shall occur no less than 30 days after the announcement of its formation in the case of a telephone meeting and no less than 45 days after the announcement of its formation in the case of a face-to-face meeting. Persons intending to participate in the first meeting must register to attend no later than 15 days prior to the event by notifying the person named as chair of the new TC of their intention to attend the meeting. Every PEOTCP present at the first meeting of a TC shall be initially a voting member of the TC. Problem: "People are signing up for the TC when they are not yet members; additional time is required for additional tracking to make sure that they obtain OASIS membership before the first meeting. The current language does not promote scalability." (Karl Best) PAC recommendation: That the first paragraph of Section 1(d) of the TC Policy quoted above be amended to read as follows: The first meeting of a TC shall occur no less than 30 days after the announcement of its formation in the case of a telephone meeting and no less than 45 days after the announcement of its formation in the case of a face-to-face meeting. Persons intending to participate in the first meeting must register to attend no later than 15 days prior to the event by notifying the person named as chair of the new TC of their intention to attend the meeting and must be eligible for TC participation at the time they register. Every PEOTCP present at the first meeting of a TC shall be initially a voting member of the TC. ================================================================== Amendment 2: Bug in the two-out-of-three rule Subsection 1(f)(i) of the TC Policy currently reads as follows: A member shall be warned by mail from the chair of the TC upon failure to attend two out of every three successive meetings of the TC. Membership shall be terminated if the member fails to attend the next meeting following transmittal of the warning. Problem: This language (adopted almost verbatim from ANSI rules) allows a member willing to endure repeated warnings to attend only half the meetings instead of two-thirds as intended. For example: miss meeting #1 miss meeting #2 get warning from chair attend meeting #3 miss meeting #4 get warning from chair ... Discussion: There are two problems here. One is mechanical: warnings should not reset the counter. The other is more subtle. As noted in the PAC minutes for 13 June: Sometimes the problem is that a few very useful members are also useful members of other committees and simply cannot attend all of the meetings. In this case, a chair needs to be able to support the continuing participation of such members. But in some other cases, the problem is that a person who wishes to be perceived as a member is not, in fact, willing to contribute to the work. The TC process is specifically designed to remove persons in the second category from voting membership in the TC. The trick is how to enable the completely automatic removal of a useless member while permitting the chair (with the tacit consent of the TC) to allow a useful member to break the rule occasionally. PAC recommendation: That Subsection 1(f)(i) of the TC Policy quoted above be amended as follows: 1. Insert "their first" into the first sentence of 1(f)(i) so that it reads: A member shall be warned by mail from the chair of the TC upon their first failure to attend two out of every three successive meetings of the TC. 2. Add "or if the member consistently fails to attend two out of every three meetings" to the second sentence of the same paragraph so that it reads: Membership shall be terminated if the member fails to attend the next meeting following transmittal of the warning or if the member consistently fails to attend two out of every three meetings. ================================================================== Amendment 3: Retention of TC membership upon change of employment Problem: Since TC members are individual experts whose company affiliation is irrelevant to their membership in the TC, most cases in which TC members change employers can be handled very straightforwardly if the member obtains an individual membership ($250) before leaving an OASIS member employer. But if the member has already accepted employment with another OASIS organization, this will be a waste of money. And there is the increasingly frequent case where a member's employment ceases without notice. We need to patch over the crack here with a grace period. PAC recommendation: That Subsection 1(e) of the TC Policy be amended by adding this new paragraph at the end of the subsection: Persons who lose PEOTCP status for reasons including, but not limited to, change of employment, shall have a further 14 days of TC membership in which to request a leave of absence or re-establish eligibility. Editorial note: Since the TC Policy uniformly specifies 15 days for periods of this duration, the PAC probably should have specified 15 days here rather than 14. For the sake of consistency, therefore, I recommend that the board adopt the following instead: Persons who lose PEOTCP status for reasons including, but not limited to, change of employment, shall have a further 15 days of TC membership in which to request a leave of absence or re-establish eligibility. ================================================================== Amendment 4: Minimum number of members Problem: There's nothing in Robert's to prevent a committee from consisting of just one or two people (and indeed, such a committee can be a very useful thing, allowing an issue, for example, to be handled by a Motion to Commit and then designating just one trusted person, as chair and only member of the committee, to research something and come back with a recommendation). But while this may be fine for subcommittees of a TC, it's not good for a TC itself to have fewer members than the three required to start it in the first place. PAC recommendation: That Subsection 1(k) of the TC Policy be amended by adding a third sentence, so that the section in its entirety reads as follows: (k). TC Meetings. "TC meeting" shall be construed to include telephone conferences and video conferences as well as face-to-face meetings. Any TC that fails to conduct at least one meeting during a calendar year shall cease to exist at the beginning of the calendar year immediately following. [new sentence:] Any TC whose voting membership falls below three members shall cease to exist. ================================================================== Amendment 5: Public subscription to discussion lists Problem: The current TC Policy allows for the formation of short-term "discussion lists" (maximum life 90 days) for the purpose of discussing the formation of a TC. Such discussion lists are visible to the general public. The question is whether they should also be publicly subscribable. While the advisability of extending what is essentially a member benefit to nonmembers is debatable, the fact that the current list machinery will not support the automatic exclusion of non-PEOTCPs gives this question real weight: it means that any list that's not subscribable by everyone requires new members to be approved manually by the chair or by OASIS administration. There is nothing we can do about this overhead in the case of TC lists, but we can at least step around this in the case of discussion lists by just allowing public subscription. While the motivation here is mainly practical (the recommendation can be effected by simply setting a switch in the mail server interface), allowing the public to subscribe could also have the advantage of promoting new OASIS memberships among persons who become engaged in the initial discussion phase and want to follow it into TC work. PAC recommendation: That the first paragraph of Subsection 1(b) of the TC Policy be amended to add the words "publicly subscribable" before "discussion list." Before amendment: Any group of at least three PEOTCPs shall be authorized to begin a discussion list for the purpose of forming a TC by submitting to OASIS TC administration the following items: [...] After amendment: Any group of at least three PEOTCPs shall be authorized to begin a publicly subscribable discussion list for the purpose of forming a TC by submitting to OASIS TC administration the following items: [...] ================================================================== Amendment 6: IPR compliance Problem: We wish to do everything we can to prevent companies from participating in standards work in a way that creates hidden dependencies on their patents or copyrights. But we keep returning to the facts that (a) the PAC does not own the IPR policy, which is a creation of the board, and (b) it is very difficult to devise a method whereby OASIS member representatives can testably certify the state of their knowledge regarding their company's IPR. After a great deal of discussion last year followed by more discussion in this recent review of the issues, the best we can do is to add a provision that should make it impossible for OASIS member representatives in a TC to deny that they were aware of the IPR policy. PAC recommendation: That a new item (g) be added to the checklist of items (first paragraph of Section 2 of the TC Policy) that must be submitted by a TC when proposing a standard: (g) a statement from the chair of the TC certifying that all members of the TC have been provided with a copy of the OASIS IPR policy. The revised paragraph would then read as follows: A technical committee (TC) as defined in Section 1 of this Policy that has approved and published a committee specification may simultaneously or at some later time recommend that the specification be made an OASIS standard. Upon resolution of the TC to move the specification forward, its chair shall submit the following items to OASIS: (a) a formal specification that is a valid member of its type; (b) appropriate documentation for the specification; (c) a clear English-language summary of the specification; (d) certification by at least three OASIS member organizations that they are successfully using the specification; (e) an account of or pointer to votes and comments received in any earlier attempts to standardize substantially the same specification, together with the originating TC's response to each comment; (f) a pointer to the publicly visible comments archive for the originating TC; and (g) a statement from the chair of the TC certifying that all members of the TC have been provided with a copy of the OASIS IPR policy. ================================================================== Amendment 7: Mail lists Problem: Each OASIS TC is provided with two mailing lists: a general list for use by the members of the TC and a comment list that allows people outside of the TC to register comments on the work of the TC. The way that membership is controlled in these two lists has created management problems for OASIS administration and the TC chairs. The solution is to make all comment lists publicly subscribable and limit subscriptions to all TC general lists by default to the members of the TC (remembering that any OASIS member can read such lists via the archive). Recommendation: That the first two paragraphs of Subsection 1(i) of the TC Policy be amended as follows: Before amendment: (i). TC Visibility. All TC electronic mail lists shall be archived for the duration of the corporation, and all TC mail archives shall be publicly visible. Each TC shall be provided upon formation with a general list and a comment list. Every PEOTCP shall be able to subscribe to the general mailing list of any TC, but only members of that TC shall be able to post to it. The minutes of each TC meeting shall be published to that TC's general list. The comment list of a TC shall be open to contributions from every PEOTCP, and may also be enabled to accept comments from other groups or from the public at large by resolution of the TC. TCs shall not be required to respond to comments. [...] After amendment: (i). TC Visibility. All TC electronic mail lists shall be archived for the duration of the corporation, and all TC mail archives shall be publicly visible. Each TC shall be provided upon formation with a general list and a comment list. Subscription to the general list shall be automatic for members of the TC and available, by resolution of the TC, to other individual PEOTCPs. The minutes of each TC meeting shall be published to that TC's general list. The comment list of a TC shall be publicly subscribable. TCs shall not be required to respond to comments. [...]
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