I must admit, I always thought there was a principle of one organisation, one vote so it's a bit of a shock to learn otherwise.
I write as an individual member who has been active in the complete cycle of developing an OASIS standard. I already accept - albeit grudgingly - that the big corporate sponsor members get a bigger say (more publicity and profile in press releases and announcements of important TC milestones) than ordinary company members; and that ordinary companies and organisations get a bigger say (voting for the Board, at AGMs, etc) than us individual members.
The scenario in which companies enrol to a TC en masse just a couple of meetings before a key milestone (such as adopting a spec) really sucks. I have seen names of individuals and companies on the list of "participants" for a spec whom I have never heard of or seen anywhere during the process. A typical TCs work will be carried by a dedicated group of individuals (with the support of their companies or through individual doggedness). It is already irksome that sponsor members can trumpet their "participation" in developing a standard or spec. (and have that reinforced by OASIS press releases etc) just by keeping a voting member status on a TC but without having to do a stroke of work, while often individual members (funding their own participation and costs - travel and conf call fees, usually to a US number) get no profile or recognition, except their name on the spec.
In the work in which I've been involved, I have not noticed an excessive "packing" of TCs by large numbers of people from some organisation members, so maybe I've been lucky but I would say if that had happened on any TC of which I was an active member, I would have become very quickly annoyed if all they do is show up for the roll-call and then disappear without a trace. If people want to join a TC to work, they should be welcome.
I would therefore prefer:
- no change to the number of people who can join as voting members, BUT a change to the eligibility criteria for maintaining voting level membership.
This could include (some combination of):
- a higher participation threshold: two consecutive meetings is not enough, particularly towards the end of the lifecycle of a particular piece of work; maybe four consecutive meetings and/or 90 days, once a TC has published a first draft of a proposed spec?;
- give more credit to contributors: if a TC member has contributed some piece of work, or is a co-chair, secretary or editor of a proposed spec, the threshold should be lower;
- requiring "substantive contribution" at a meeting to be considered as present for the purposes of voting eligibility: this is certainly controversial and could be subjective, but I think an approach to solving this made in good faith would lead to some solution, particularly for conf call meetings. At present, just be there for the roll-call every meeting and then hang-up and you're credited with being a voting member and as being a contributor to any spec or standard developed. Easy...but very unfair on those who do the work;
- more credit should be given to people who get off their behinds and attend F2F TC meetings!;
I'd be interested in comments about changing the eligibility criteria
Best regards,
Peter
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Peter F Brown
Chair, CEN eGovernment Focus Group
Founder, Pensive.eu
Co-Editor, OASIS SOA Reference Model
Lecturer at XML Summer School
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