Re: [chairs] Membership for open source implementers - Jeff Mischkinsky - org.oasis-open.lists.chairs

20 messages in org.oasis-open.lists.chairsRe: [chairs] Membership for open sour...

From	Sent On	Attachments
Gabe Wachob	Apr 5, 2007 2:12 pm
Paul Fremantle	Apr 5, 2007 2:29 pm
G. Ken Holman	Apr 5, 2007 2:44 pm
Gabe Wachob	Apr 5, 2007 2:58 pm
Eduardo Gutentag	Apr 5, 2007 3:06 pm
Gabe Wachob	Apr 5, 2007 3:19 pm
Eduardo Gutentag	Apr 5, 2007 3:40 pm
Arshad Noor	Apr 5, 2007 3:58 pm
Scott McGrath	Apr 5, 2007 4:00 pm
Gabe Wachob	Apr 5, 2007 5:51 pm
David RR Webber (XML)	Apr 5, 2007 6:48 pm
David RR Webber (XML)	Apr 5, 2007 7:08 pm
Scott McGrath	Apr 6, 2007 8:23 am
Paul Fremantle	Apr 6, 2007 9:32 am
Jeff Mischkinsky	Apr 6, 2007 10:22 am
Gabe Wachob	Apr 6, 2007 10:43 am
Paul Fremantle	Apr 7, 2007 12:04 am
Bob Glushko	Apr 7, 2007 6:47 am
Bill Parducci	Apr 7, 2007 7:19 am
David RR Webber (XML)	Apr 7, 2007 9:03 am

Subject:	Re: [chairs] Membership for open source implementers
From:	Jeff Mischkinsky (jeff...@oracle.com)
Date:	Apr 6, 2007 10:22:22 am
List:	org.oasis-open.lists.chairs

I know of one instance where a TC was populated by individuals who had their fees paid for them. -jeff On Apr 06, 2007, at 9:32 AM, Paul Fremantle wrote:

Scott

While no-one has paid multiple individuals to join TCs, I know of several companies have populated TCs with a large number of members, most of whom only speak up at a vote or at rollcall, so I don't think its beyond the bounds of belief.

Gabe, At some level, many members are here because their peers, partners, suppliers or customers have encouraged them to join OASIS. But we have not witnessed any situation where a member thinks so strongly of their cause as to directly encourage them with their checkbook in a "buying plurality" way. Could it happen, I suppose. Is it likely? I don't know. I do know that I'd like to hear from any members who *have* convinced their management to pay several member fees, because we might learn some interesting sales techniques ;-) Going forward... We should move this dialogue to member-discuss@lists.oasis- open.org. I can add an announcement to the next Member news that this dialogue is there now and every member (not the subset that are chairs) can share their views on this. Scott...

-----Original Message----- From: Gabe Wachob [mailto:gabe...@amsoft.net] Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 8:51 PM To: 'Scott McGrath'; Edua...@Sun.COM; chairs@lists.oasis- open.org Subject: RE: [chairs] Membership for open source implementers

Eduardo, Scott, et al:

OK, so taking my alternative, does anyone see a risk of a company astroturfing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing) a TC by paying for individual memberships for individuals acting under their "command"?

Am I just paranoid? The point of the TC process was to avoid process manipulation, and to maximize transparency. I'd like to enable open source implementer participation in as transparent a way as possible, but it feels broken for me (as a OASIS member) to be able to pay for someone else's participation and not be required to disclose that fact.

-Gabe

-----Original Message----- From: Scott McGrath [mailto:scot...@oasis-open.org] Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 4:00 PM To: 'Gabe Wachob'; Edua...@Sun.COM; chairs@lists.oasis- open.org Subject: RE: [chairs] Membership for open source implementers

Gabe, Eduardo, All,

OASIS doesn't have an "Invited Expert" but does have something of similar net effect -

A TC Chair can advocate for a free membership for someone who cannot afford to share the financial burden of supporting the OASIS infrastructure, someone who is an important technical asset. Patrick can grant a complimentary membership - which I pay for from my budget. (There are accounting reasons for not just giving away membership, but not to bore you with accounting practices here) alternatively, our Member Sections can also use some of their budget to serve their market needs by paying for memberships of someone one might deem as an expert.

I should point out that the budget for such things is justifiably limited, and probably ranges around a dozen in total. I'd also point out that the Individual class of membership (Individuals and Associates) is deeply subsidized. These are hundreds of members who willingly pay something (approximately 1/2 our cost per member to operate) willingly, because they do want to help support the overhead. So in essence, one might argue in terms of finite budgets, we can support two Individuals at the same cost as 1 complimentary member.

As Eduardo points out, the Individual membership is an extraordinary bargain, and an option not offered by many organizations that do offer some "Invited Expert" memberships. I'm jaded by proximity, but I am proud that we can enable hundreds of Individual members at a cost that is reasonable for them. I am proud of the operational efficiency of OASIS and how effectively our members share resources of time and financial support.

You know that as a non-profit, we balance revenue with operations costs. I am inclined to seek more revenue so we can provide more services to more members--because there is nearly an infinite amount of work we can do in support of the OASIS mission. That said, we are working with your dues, so we are open to your guidance on where to spend more of it ;-)

Thanks, I'll step off the soapbox now.

Scott...

-----Original Message----- From: Gabe Wachob [mailto:gabe...@amsoft.net] Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 6:20 PM To: Edua...@Sun.COM; cha...@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [chairs] Membership for open source implementers

Two things:

1) OASIS used to have "invited experts" - I was one a number of years ago (though I think the "expert" tag was maybe misapplied to me ;).

2) Eduardo, I'm not sure what your point is. I'm not saying that any individual can show up and say they are an implementer and become a member for free. I'm talking about people who have demonstrated to the TC their willingness to contribute to the TC's body of work in ways which don't involve paying money to OASIS. The point here is that we (at least our TC) need to support open source implementations to the fullest extent possible, and where the implementer is an individual and not getting paid for their implementation by an employer or other party, we're effectively pushing them away from our work. Bad Idea, if you ask me.

It sounds like the answer you are proposing is "have someone in the TC pay for that person's membership" - which is definitely one solution. But I think it raises issues about transparency and independence of TC membership. But if that's the way OASIS makes us do it, then I guess that's the way we'd do it...

-Gabe

-----Original Message----- From: Edua...@Sun.COM [mailto:Edua...@Sun.COM] Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 3:07 PM To: cha...@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [chairs] Membership for open source implementers

Ken is right, "invited expert" does not exist in OASIS, that is W3C parlance.

But:

- anybody can read the email of the TC through the archives (yes,

there

a slight delay and it's a pull not push system, but hey, it's gratis...) - anybody can send comments to the TC through the comment mechanism, which means they first have to agree (and be legally bound by their agreement) that whatever IPR they contribute to the TC is offered under the same IPR mode as the TC.

So now you know what $300 buys you.

As to the argument that "for someone doing good work that benefits the OASIS community, it seems odd that we'd throw a barrier up for them to contribute even more directly.", hm, since we all are doing work that benefits the OASIS community, why don't we just eliminate fees for all?

Just kidding...

On 04/05/2007 02:44 PM, G. Ken Holman wrote:

I'm not so quick to just let any project committer participate unless they are first obliged to adhere to the OASIS membership agreement.

I don't think money is the issue ... I think intellectual property rights are more important. Contributions to the committees have to be unencumbered and the OASIS membership agreement attempts to address this. Preventing people from just "joining our list and contributing" is not at all absurd. As a committee chair I want to ensure contributions, through the membership agreement, are acceptable to use without burdening the chair to any due diligence. The due diligence is covered off by the agreement. Legal experts have covered all this in the membership terms and I don't want to have to be in a position to interpret them personally ... that is clearly not my expertise.

BTW, where in http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ process.php is "invited expert" defined? I was unaware of Gabe's assertion that

such

concept exists in OASIS parlance. How do committees identify, qualify and accredit such experts without obligating them under the membership rules?

I hope these comments are considered constructive.

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken (Code List Representation TC Chair)

At 2007-04-05 22:30 +0100, Paul Fremantle wrote:

Gabe

I completely agree. I think that any committer on any project actively implementing an OASIS specification under an OSI license should be able to apply for a Open Source Membership free-of-charge.

Personally I don't think this is going to cost OASIS any loss of income, but it certainly will encourage a wider view of OASIS standards. Paul

Gabe Wachob wrote:

Hi Chairs- This is a topic that's come up for us I think at least twice. We have a community member (not an OASIS member) who is actively implementing our specification (XRI) and is interested in the spec discussion. However, we can't let them join our list and contribute because they have to be an OASIS member. So the only answer we can give them is "pay $300 to participate".

This seems absurd. Their implementation of our spec is one of the most valuable contributions to the TC's work at this point in the lifecycle of the spec. Their feedback on implementation issues and recommendations for how to adjust the spec are absolutely critical. And yet, they are left out of the conversation. The thought of forcing them to pay $300 to participate seems a bit ludicrous, since they are already contributing (in this case, as an individual on their own time).

OASIS has a concept of "invited expert". Could there

new category of "invited open source implementer"? As I've said many times before, I think OASIS should be trying to facilitate Open Source implementations of the Open Standards it produces to the maximum extent it can (and to the extent its TC's wish that to allow Open Source - but that's a different discussion). You may think that $300 a year is a trivial amount of money, but for someone doing good work that benefits the OASIS community, it seems odd that we'd throw a barrier up for them to contribute even more directly.

I'm sure any potential abuse could be managed, just like I assume it's managed for the "invited expert" category.

Alternatively, I suppose the membership of the TC could "chip in" for membership of the open source implementer, but this seems like a "hack" that raises some questions about independence of participation and potential appearance of manipulation of the membership.

-Gabe

"Oxygenating the Web Service Platform", www.wso2.com

-- World-wide corporate, govt. & user group XML, XSL and UBL training RSS feeds: publicly-available developer resources and training G. Ken Holman mailto:gkho...@CraneSoftwrights.com Crane Softwrights Ltd. http:// www.CraneSoftwrights.com/o/ Box 266, Kars, Ontario CANADA K0A-2E0 +1(613)489-0999 (F:-0995) Male Cancer Awareness Aug'05 http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/ o/bc Legal business disclaimers: http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/ legal

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