stephe@speaker.uucp (Stephen R. Walli) (06/25/91)
There's a Mini Ballot attached to the latest circulation of the TCOS/SSC
Operating Procedures. It has to do with the removal of voting privileges from
the Institutional Representatives. I'm posting this set of ponderings because
I want to understand why IRs shouldn't have voting privileges. I need some
education here.
- I don't like the fact that they recast the current voting situation into a
"no" vote situation in the text, then asked for guidance.
- Let's look at the IRs.
USENIX, Uniforum, EurOpen, GUIDE, DECUS
---------------------------------------
There are user groups which for the most part are financially accessible to
the average technical person, regardless of their employer, in a similar
way to the IEEE and IEEE/CS.
X/Open, OSF, UI
---------------
There's the vendor consortia. These are not-for-profit (revenue neutral,
non-profit, etc.) organizations with membership fees WELL outside of the
individual. The high cost of membership provides members with a different
set of benefits, such as early access to source code of the products
built by these organizations. (I realize this doesn't apply to X/Open. I'm
not sure what the return for their high cost of admission is.)
IRs represent both user communities and vendor (producer) communities.
This fits the multiple viewpoint policy of balloting groups within the
IEEE.
- TCOS/SEC is responsible for the business/financial side of the standards
budget, and the creation and policing of WGs and Steering Committees. The
IRs represent their communities (vendor and user) at the policy level the
same way that individual members represent those viewpoints at the technical
level within a WG. This is why IRs should be voting members. It is a
continuation of the open standards process that is a pillar of the IEEE
standards platform.
(Chairpeople are responsible for their individual projects, and are not
responsible for TCOS/SEC policy co-ordination with their WG.)
- The "Them" (IRs) outnumbering "Us" ("... individual professional members
of the IEEE...") phrasing in the Mini Ballot is a little inflamatory.
My guess is that most of the IRs are members of the IEEE anyway, since
they are involved and are probably balloting members. I would
hope there isn't a suggestion that IRs are unprofessional in this statement.
There are by my count, 17 chairpeople, plus 4 steering committees, plus
TCOS/SEC officers. There are 8 IRs. The proliferation of project WGs and
necessary steering committees seems to be faster than new IR acceptance.
Besides, it's not a numbers game.
- This next point does not involve the IR voting status, but illustrates a
point. Somewhere along the line, it was decided that IRs with the ability to
ballot draft documents would receive "special" status. While their ballots
do not weigh any heavier for consideration, their names are published
seperately at the front of the standard as IRs. Somewhere in the standards
acceptance heirarchy, people feel it is important to draw attention to these
institutions in the acceptance of the standard. It somehow seems
inappropriate that they do not carry voting weight within the policy world
of TCOS/SEC.
So what am I missing? Why shouldn't IRs have the vote?
Disclaimer:
The above opinions are strictly my own, and since I work for myself, they
also represent my company's. People still love to disagree with them and
correct them along the way.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Stephen R. Walli SRW Software
phone: (416) 579 0304 572 Foxrun Court,
fax: (416) 571 1991 Oshawa, Ontario, Canada,
speaker!stephe@mks.com -OR- L1K 1N9
uunet!watmath!mks!speaker!stephe
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Volume-Number: Volume 24, Number 20