[OpenID board] The Specs Council and Process (WAS: Re: Executive Committee meeting 12/18/2008 ...)

[David Recordon]

Yeah, this is something we're working on taking care of.  Right now  
the challenge is:
  - There are a few proposals for working groups with very little  
consensus among the community around any of them
  - Most of the working group proposals are still drafts
  - Mike Jones has a thread going with other specs council members  
about how we need to respond to these proposals
  - The specs council does not currently have a mailing list and there  
is a struggle between creating another low traffic list versus using  
an existing list.  I've been asked to make a list, which I can do,  
though there is little to no consensus that we should do so

I then personally have a larger struggle with the process in place.  I  
strongly believe that it does not do good for OpenID to have it pushed  
in divergent technical directions (we've seen what happened with 2.0  
as it tried to please everyone) though feel that the community has  
very little power to prevent that.  While I could drive toward  
consensus on the specs@ mailing list that a proposal still needs  
changes to fit along with the direction of OpenID, technically the  
specs council would be hard pressed to use that as a reason to not  
approve a working group.

The specs council is given a list of four reasons that it can not  
approve a new working group.  To take a lack of consensus on the  
specs@ mailing list as input, it would have to decide  either "that  
the proposal contravenes the OpenID community’s purpose" (where the  
Foundation says "OpenID is a set of freely available enabling  
technologies that facilitate individuals to use their identity and  
profile from one web resource to access many others in a  
decentralized, secure, and easy fashion built upon existing web  
technologies.") or "that the proposed WG does not have sufficient  
support to succeed or to deliver proposed deliverables within  
projected completion dates."  While significant part of the technical  
community might disagree with a working group proposal, I don't see  
there being a way (as a member of the specs council) to in good faith  
decide that it contravenes the purpose or except in extremely grave  
cases that it would not succeed.

 From there the proposal goes to a vote of the membership which is  
structured in such a way as to pass with a quorum requirement of 20%  
of the membership or 20 members, whichever is greater, and a simple  
majority vote.

Beyond all of that, the quickest that a working group can be formed is  
no more than 15 days of review by the specs council (which we're  
failing at right now), plus a 14 day notice period of the membership  
vote, plus a 7 day voting period.  This thus means that by our current  
process it takes approximately a month for new work to begin.

 From there, the fastest that a working group could produce a final  
specification is theoretically 120 days.  The IPR Process requires a  
review period of at least 60 days (which PAPE is going through right  
now) for a final specification.  From there, assuming that no one  
objects around IPR or the board for legal liability, a 45 day review  
period for the membership of the Foundation is started which results  
in a 14 day voting period to approval the specification and officially  
call it "OpenID <something>".  This thus means that from the day the  
working group feels they have their final draft, it will take 119 days  
(~4 months) for the specification to go through all of the needed IPR  
review steps.

I know that I was intimately involved in creating this process but the  
more that I see it in practice, the more that I know we must change it  
and understand why new innovative work like the OpenID and OAuth  
Hybrid occurs outside the purview of the OpenID Foundation.  (And yes,  
I understand how I'm being a bit hypocritical by saying that getting  
started should be easier yet only for the work that a core group feels  
fits into what OpenID is which can be done in many different ways.)

I guess my point is that we need to make it much easier to get  
started, though make sure it is hard for something to be called  
"OpenID" when it clearly doesn't use existing OpenID technology or  
does something wildly different.  Right now our process is loaded up  
at the start and at the end, which means that people are going and  
starting elsewhere.

--David

On Dec 17, 2008, at 8:09 AM, Scott Kveton wrote:

>> It might not be the board issue, but there are several WG proosals
>> sitting there. According to the OpenID process, spec comittee needs
>> issue a recomendatiom within two weeks so that the working group
>> creation voting can take place.
>
> Is this something for the specifications council?:
>
> http://wiki.openid.net/OpenID_Foundation/SC
>
> I believe this is out of scope for the Exec. Committee.
>
> - Scott
>
>
>
>
>
>> =nat at TOKYO via iPhone
>>
>> On 2008/12/18, at 0:41, "Scott Kveton" <scott at kveton.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Unless anyone has anything particularly pressing to discuss, I'd  
>>> like
>>> to cancel the Executive Committee meeting scheduled for tomorrow at
>>> 11am PST.
>>>
>>> If there is something you'd like to discuss and still feel like we
>>> need a meeting, by all means, let me know and we can rethink.
>>>
>>> FYI,
>>>
>>> - Scott
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> board mailing list
>>> board at openid.net
>>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/board
>> _______________________________________________
>> board mailing list
>> board at openid.net
>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/board
>>
> _______________________________________________
> board mailing list
> board at openid.net
> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/board